2004-11-26

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from November 24 consideration of the motion that Bill C-7, an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed.
Mr. Alan Tonks (York South—Weston, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am delighted this morning to rise on Bill C-7. The bill is in fact a reaffirmation of the government's absolute desire and commitment not only to review the responsibilities associated with our natural heritage with respect to our parks and historic designations within our parks and natural environment, but also to make sure of the continuity required with respect to our built history, to make sure that there is a very clear delineation of responsibility with respect to maintaining what Canadians have a right to. Their natural and their built heritage should be protected, administered and managed in manner that is in keeping with the high degree of responsibility we all feel for our heritage.
As members will know, then, the bill is an act to amend the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act and to make related amendments to other acts. As I said, it will delineate responsibilities.
The thrust of my comments today will be about the action plan on establishing new national parks and national marine conservation areas within the context of the bill, two subjects which members have said from time to time are issues they really want to get into.
I will give members a little history. On December 12, the control and supervision of the Parks Canada Agency was transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment. This transfer was given effect through an order in council.
On July 20, 2004, another order in council came into effect relating to responsibilities for our built heritage. It was required in order to clarify the earlier order in council. First, control and supervision of the historic places policy group, that group and its responsibilities, was transferred from the Department of Canadian Heritage to Parks Canada. Second, the powers, duties and functions related to the design and implementation of the program that had built heritage as their primary subject matter were transferred from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to the Minister of the Environment.
Bill C-7, as I have indicated, will update the legislation to reflect these directions and these responsibilities.
The bill deals with the machinery of government and does not contain any substantive policy provisions. It simply gives legislative effect to the direction that the government reorganization was taking, as announced on December 2003, in particular as it affects Parks Canada.
In addition to amending the Department of Canadian Heritage Act and the Parks Canada Agency Act, Bill C-7 also amends statutes through which Parks Canada delivers its mandate: the Canada National Parks Act; the Historic Sites and Monuments Act; the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act; the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act; the Saguenay--St. Lawrence Marine Park Act; the Species at Risk Act; and the Canada Shipping Act. All of these are associated statutes that are implicated by this transfer. But there are no additional funding requirements related to Bill C-7, as the jurisdictional responsibilities with respect to funding, works and associated initiatives obviously are within the budgets of the relevant departments.
Parks Canada's organizational integrity has been maintained. The Parks Canada agency remains committed to working with Canadians to protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada's natural and cultural heritage for present and future generations.
I think it would be an understatement to say that the examples of that unique heritage, which in fact is a reflection of the various cycles of immigration and our first nations and aboriginal peoples and so on, are top of mind with respect to our heritage.
I would like to take a few moments to talk about the Parks Canada story. I think it is a global best practice. It is a story that is worth repeating often in order for us to have a sense of just how absolutely spectacular this country is in terms of its natural heritage.
I am sure that from the House's perspective Canada's national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas are somewhat akin to the soul of our country. They are a central part of who we are and what we are and in fact what we want to be. It is what we signal to the world that is so important with respect to the preservation and the stewardship of the natural heritage we enjoy.
These places are obviously places of wonder and awe for those Canadians who have travelled from coast to coast to coast. I happen to be one of them. I am never above and beyond being totally impressed with what God has given us as a natural environment. It is just so absolutely awesome, even in the global context.
Each of those places also tells its own story because the people who live in those areas have a special kinship with respect to their natural heritage and their built heritage. In fact, it is a reflection of a very regional kinship that people have with their own immediate environment. It is one that they wish to share with all Canadians and in fact with the world. It is unique. That natural environment, our built environment, is also a reflection of the mosaic that we refer to as Canada.
What we cherish as part of our national identity, we also recognize as part of our national responsibility. If we feel so strongly on the one hand how special our heritage is, then equally we have to rise to the challenge in terms of our accountability to nurture and preserve it.
All Canadians share the responsibility to preserve and protect Canada's unique cultural and natural heritage. Together, we hold our national parks, our national historic sites and our national marine conservation areas in trust for the benefit of this and future generations.
Canada has the distinction of having established the first national park service in the world. Over the decades, our system of national parks has grown to 41 national parks and reserves, preserving for future generations almost 265,000 square kilometres of lands and waters. There are plans to add an additional 100,000 square kilometres through the creation of eight more national parks. This legacy is possible in large part because provincial and territorial governments, aboriginal and first nations people and local communities have worked with us to create many of these new national parks.
The creation and management of national parks is a delicate balance between protection of ecologically significant areas of importance to wildlife and meeting economic and social needs of communities.
The Government of Canada is committed to working with aboriginal people, local communities and other Canadians and stakeholders to protect our precious national heritage through the creation of new national parks and national marine conservation areas. When I say the Government of Canada, I include that this particular issue is a non-partisan issue in which all members of the House on both sides, in all parties, feel the same with respect to the protection of our natural and built heritage.
In October 2002 the government announced an initiative to substantially complete Canada's system of national parks by creating 10 new parks over the next five years. This will expand the system by almost 50%, with the total area spanning nearly the size of Newfoundland and Labrador. We have already created two of these 10 new national parks with work continuing on eight other proposals. Five new national marine conservation areas will also be created.
Canada is blessed with exceptional natural treasures. We owe it to Canadians and to the world to protect these lands and waters. The action plan calls on Parks Canada to work with all of its partners, the provinces and territories, aboriginal and rural communities, industry, environmental groups, labour and all others, to complete this effort.
In March 2003 the government allocated $144 million over five years and $29 million annually thereafter toward this effort.
The action plan has already produced two national parks. The new Gulf Islands National Park Reserve of Canada protects 33 square kilometres of ecologically rare land in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia.
At over 20,000 square kilometres the new Ukkusiksalik National Park of Canada protects virtually an entire watershed close to the Arctic Circle in Nunavut.
As we speak, the whole issue of ecological balance is being discussed. We have had the recent Arctic report out of Iceland and a conference is going on with respect to countries that have responsibility for the Arctic. Our mandate is to be accountable to preserving the Arctic. We all know there are huge challenges with respect to global warming and the Arctic.
Other parallel concerns are being expressed through reports that will be coming to the House. As a matter of fact, there will be a report today with respect to water quality in some of our natural areas, one of which is the Great Lakes Basin, that will be a parallel effort in an attempt to make sure that these natural areas are protected, the latter being water quality.
The Ukkusiksalik Park is a product of an agreement between the Government of Canada and the Inuit of Nunavut forged over several decades of hard work, all focused on protecting land, water, caribou and polar bears for present and future generations.
Specific sites for more national parks will be selected in other natural regions across Canada, the southern Okanagan; the lower Similkameen in interior British Columbia; Labrador's Torngat Mountains and Mealy Mountains; Manitoba's lowland boreal forests; Bathurst Island in Nunavut; and the east arm of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. Just to speak about those potential inclusions geographically gives one the sense of the vastness of Canada. Sites for the two remaining national parks are being identified by Parks Canada.
Negotiations to establish the Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve in northern Labrador are nearing completion. Members will be pleased to know that this longstanding proposal will protect some of the highest mountains in North America east of the Canadian Rockies.
In March 2004 the Premier of Manitoba and the former minister of the environment signed a memorandum of agreement identifying the boundaries for public consultation for a national park in the Manitoba lowlands. They also committed to negotiating a national park establishment agreement by May 2005. Both parks will make significant additions to our worldclass national parks system.
The government is also working with partners to establish five new national marine conservation areas, adding an estimated 15,000 square kilometres to the system. This will be a major step for global conservation of marine habitat. Canada has the world's longest coastline and 7% of its fresh water.
This commitment to creating a new marine conservation area is consistent with recent Speeches from the Throne in which our government made a commitment to create new marine protected areas as part of the ocean action plan. These national marine conservation areas will be located in ecologically unrepresented marine regions. Four sites have been identified, including the Gwaii Haanas off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, western Lake Superior, British Columbia's southern Strait of Georgia and the waters off the Îles de la Madeleine in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
While a site for the remaining national marine conservation area has yet to be finalized, Parks Canada has received a number of proposals from local communities, a testament to the growing interest in the conservation of our marine heritage.
In addition, the government will accelerate its actions over the next five years to improve the ecological integrity of Canada's 41 existing national parks. This will implement the action plan arising from the report of the panel on the ecological integrity of Canada's national parks, which was endorsed by the government in April 2000.
These two initiatives, the action plan to establish our system and to expand our system of national parks and national marine conservation areas and the action plan on ecological integrity, are the most ambitious initiatives to expand and protect national parks and national marine conservation areas in over 100 years, indeed, since Banff National Park of Canada, Canada's first, was established in 1885.
Parks Canada needs to get on with the job and Parliament has assigned the job to it. I urge all members, for the reasons I have attempted to articulate in my comments, to support the bill as a major step forward in outlining and saying to Canadians that the House, the government and all parties understand the responsibilities with respect to the stewardship of our natural and built environment, and that the bill is a step toward maintaining that accountability with all Canadians.
Mr. Richard Harris (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I was very impressed with the commitment the member for York South—Weston has to the preservation, protection and enhancement of our national parks which, as everyone in the House knows, are the most beautiful national parks that can be found anywhere in the world. He talked about responsibility and stewardship.
My party will be supporting the bill because we have to do whatever it takes.
The member, in his speech, talked about the government's commitment to the protection of our parks. He talked about the ecologically rare areas we have in Canada. I think every one of our parks can fit into that category.
I am wondering if the member for York South--Weston is aware of a very imminent threat that is about to occur and is, as we speak, already occurring on the west side of both the Banff and Jasper National Parks, which is the very large amassing of mountain pine beetles. They are continuing an easterly movement and will destroy every single mature pine tree in both of those parks if they are not arrested and dealt with.
This is important and I have to be critical of the government. This is a natural ecological disaster happening in the province of British Columbia. The reason that those beetles are there is that despite discovering the presence of the pine beetle back in the early nineties and numerous calls to the federal government from the province of B.C. to recognize this as a natural disaster, inasmuch as the ice storms in Ontario and Quebec and the floods in Manitoba, every request for assistance to mitigate and arrest the damage and progress of the mountain pine beetle has not been responded to by the federal government, to the point now that these bugs are on the western side of both Banff and Jasper National Parks.
I would ask the member whether the government is as committed as he says it is. After hearing the passion with which the member gave his presentation, I believe he is committed to doing everything he can, so I would ask him the following.
First, did he know about the presence of the mountain pine beetle and the damage they have caused and are causing on the western side of Jasper and Banff National Parks? If so, will he do everything he can to press the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Natural Resources to come immediately to the aid of the province to help mitigate the damage and stop the spread of the mountain pine beetle?
If we do not do that we will see a forest fire in the province of B.C. and in the westerly part of Alberta where those parks are, just as sure as we are speaking today, the magnitude of which we have never seen. This creates the most absolutely timber dry wood as an ultimate end that is ripe for a lightening strike. We could find both of those national parks in an imminent state of being ready for a fire disaster to hit.
Will the member please direct some efforts toward the ministers responsible to recognize the magnitude of the beetle infestation, the imminent danger and the damage that is already being caused to those two national parks?
Alan Tonks: Mr. Speaker, I truly appreciate both the spirit and the substance of the question. As the member was reflecting on the nature and implication of the mountain pine beetles, I also was reflecting on the impact a similar invasive species, the Asian longhorned beetle, has had in my constituency in Toronto. In many constituencies, the Asian longhorned beetle is decimating softwood, in particular, ash, such as mountain ash and other species of ash, in Toronto and the area.
The member might not be aware that there are signs all over, trying to cloister the impact of the Asian longhorned beetle. It is having a similar impact in urban settings where it is so necessary to have trees to maintain the ecological balance. It now has been found that the Asian longhorned beetle is not only just a seasonal problem, but it is permeating itself. It can hibernate in the winter and re-emerge in the summer. It is a very serious issue. In that instance a strategic initiative is taking place, coordinated between the provincial and local governments.
I cannot give a total answer, but I can give a process answer and possibly a substance answer. The first is to get the information as to what is being done with respect to the mountain pine beetle. There is absolutely no challenging the cause and effect that the member has established. It does implicate on this bill and the spirit behind it. That case can be established. Having established the case in terms of what is going on, how effective we are, it then is a jurisdictional issue as to how we can establish a process that will deal with it.
I will get as much information for the member on what the nature of the issue is at this point. Then there might be the opportunity to raise it as a matter before the House and have the appropriate minister give an overview, or an inter-jurisdictional plan from heritage and natural resources, so the whole House can be informed as to not only what is going on, but what the future plan is.
Just in asking the question, the member has done a service to the issue which this bill is based on, and that is that we all are accountable for our natural heritage. This is not a partisan issue. We have been given that responsibility. If the member has defined and identified an issue that is of concern in that geographic area, Banff and Jasper, it is an issue for all Canadians.
I can assure him that I will get the information in the first instance of what we are doing, and then we can use that as the basis to satisfy ourselves as to whether that is enough. Then we can take it on from that point.
Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—Tecumseh, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I would like to put this to the speaker from the Liberal Party and the chair of the environment committee. Does he not think there is a missed opportunity on the part of the government to not only transfer responsibility for Parks Canada to the environment department, but also to strengthen the legislation that would protect our parks and, in particular, would protect the parks from invasive species, from land uses adjacent to the parks?
Could he comment on the need for that type of strengthening of our Parks Canada legislation?
Alan Tonks: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the member's question, I will read from an overview. It states:

Whoever is appointed the Minister responsible for Parks Canada is bound by the provisions of the Canada National Parks Act. Parks Canada will continue to be accountable to Parliament through its responsible Minister.

That would take some steps toward allaying the fears that have been expressed and have led to an amendment with respect to the bill to take the “may” out and to make the Minister of the Environment as the accountable person.
I think members can see from the responses I have given how seriously I take the accountability with respect to the intent of the bill. Therefore, members might know that I also would not be opposed to being very sharply definitive in terms of ultimate and absolute accountability. If that is determined to be the Minister of the Environment, then I would have no problems with that.
Joe Comartin: Mr. Speaker, I rise with a great desire to speak to the bill, not only because of my involvement in the previous Parliament but because our party has concerns with regard to where we go as a country with our natural areas, particularly those areas that are encompassed by the Parks Canada legislation.
Bill C-7, now at third reading, is being treated as a housekeeping bill in the sense that all we are doing is transferring responsibility for our parks, both on land and in water, to the Department of the Environment, from heritage. Our party has pressed for that transfer for a long time. I believe it is necessary for Canada to do this.
Having said that, we need to place in context where we are with our parks, again both on land and in water. One of the things that I want to address is a concern with the attitude of the government toward our parks.
As we have heard from the previous speaker in some detail, we have a proud history of developing and taking care of our parks. However, that is dated history. As we heard from the previous prime minister, the plan is to expand our parks, and we need to do that. There is an international standard that we need to meet.
As I travel both within the country and, more important, outside the country, it is interesting to see the attention paid to Canada in this area. Canada has large undeveloped areas. They are still in their natural state. There is an expectation across the globe that we will foster protection for those areas. The concern that I and my party have is we are not doing a good enough job.
The standard internationally is that 12% of all our land, and that includes both in the water and on land, is to be set aside and preserved in its natural state. If we do a superficial analysis, we are fairly close to that, especially when we take into account the lands that we expect will be moved over into our national parks. We have moved reasonably well at a theoretical level. However, the reality on the ground and in the water is different.
In the last Parliament, we moved to expand our facilities in the water, in the form of marine conservation areas. I would point out one of the other countries that has taken more of a leading role. Australia, is way ahead of us in this regard. It had marine conservation areas of a similar nature almost two decades ago. We only got to it about two years ago.
The concerns we have, with the role the federal government has played or this Liberal administration has since being elected in 1993, is that the parks have deteriorated. Any number of reports, which have come out in the last four to five years, show that not enough money has been spent to maintain the existing parks. Not only are the buildings within the parks themselves deteriorating quite noticeably, so are the natural areas. We need to address those reports and meet the requirements set out in the recommendations, and we are not.
For instance, it was quite interesting to see what happened when the previous prime minister announced that we would have these 10 new parks. That was about two years ago. The funding to go with that was woefully inadequate. It simply would not do it. This is perhaps the height of hypocrisy. Those parks took in areas that had substantial first nations land claims against them. I would suggest, without prejudging the outcome, that it will be established that the first nations claims are valid.
The prime minister of the day was in fact proposing to convey land into the public sphere that ultimately is not public land, it is first nations land. That is a real problem.
Similarly, in the last Parliament, as I said earlier, we passed the legislation dealing with marine conservation areas. However, there is no way near enough money to protect them. In fact, the legislation has some major flaws in the provisions about what would be permitted in those marine conservation areas, including dragging off the east coast that would destroy the coral that is there. This is one of the major reasons that we should be protecting that area.
On both the east and west coasts, it would allow for exploration for minerals, and oil and gas deposits which in most cases require the use of explosives. This would damage the biological integrity of those areas.
We have a situation where at the pronouncement level it looks good. However, when we get down to the reality of what is happening in our parks, whether on land or in the seas, we are not carrying through to meet that international standard that we are being expected to by the world.
I want to go back for a minute to the role that first nations have played in this area. The reason we are close to having the 12%, the international standard, is because the first nations claims, particularly in the northern territories, have provided us with a good deal of that percentage. It is one that I think we have to recognize as a society and as a government. We have to acknowledge that what they have done as a people is to protect the biological integrity of the areas that they control.
I want to deal a bit more with the threats that we are faced with in the parks and that we would like to have seen addressed in this bill. As opposed to this simply being a housekeeping bill to transfer responsibility, we would prefer to see more in the way of regulation and legislation that would protect our natural areas in our parks and marine conservation areas.
I want to talk about the attitude that we saw expressed by the government. We moved as a party, on behalf of our member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, that the responsibility be directly attributed to the Minister of the Environment. The bill, as it originally came before the House before it was successfully amended, provided that any minister or other individuals within the Privy Council Office could be designated as responsible.
This goes to the essential attitude that this government has had since 1993 of seeing parks sort of off on the side and not having a champion, not having an advocate. When Parks Canada was with heritage, the heritage minister obviously had conflicting responsibilities: to protect the arts and culture, broadcasting, et cetera, and Parks Canada was an additional responsibility.
As a result of that, we saw a dramatic deterioration in the parks. It is appropriate that we put it back into an environment where we have the minister who, one would expect, and I do not say we always get that from these ministers, would play that championing role, that advocacy role within the government and within cabinet to see to it that the parks do not further deteriorate and in fact the remedial work is done. They should be brought back to the standard one would expect and new parks would be properly protected. Boundaries would be built around them so that we would not see any deterioration in those parks, or usages within those parks that would be inappropriate and incompatible with maintaining them in their natural state.
We need that person in the cabinet. We moved that amendment and want to acknowledge the support that we received from the opposition parties on that amendment. We got it through successfully earlier this week.
What it says to us as a party is that the Liberal government is really not serious. We would like to see other issues addressed. We are obviously not going to get it. We will support this bill because it is important to have the transfer made from heritage to environment.
However, we would have appreciated and expected that the government would have taken a more proactive role in seeing that other protections were built into the legislation so that our parks would meet the standards that the international community is expecting of us and more importantly, that Canadians from coast to coast to coast are expecting of us.
We talk about the national identity of Canadians and the angst that we sometimes go through. We know that our health care system is one of the programs that we point to that separates us from other countries and that makes us proud to be Canadians.
The national parks fit into that category as well, whether it is in the Maritimes, again offshore or onshore, whether it is in central Canada, in the Prairies, in the Rockies, in B.C., or up north in the territories. In every area there are national parks or natural areas that we are proud as Canadians to say we are protecting and we will protect.
That is the essence I believe of being Canadian. If we travel, especially in the developed world, we are looked at as having the best of both worlds. We have an economy that is strong, but we also have been able within that to protect our parks. It is very important that Canadians do that and it is very important that we continue to do that.
This legislation does not advance us much in that regard. Other than making the transfer and hoping that we end up with an advocate within the government and within cabinet, it does not advance us much in that regard, in spite of the expectations of both Canadians and the world as a whole.
I want to spend a couple of minutes on other threats that are applicable to the parks. Threats that I would ask the government to consider subsequently in regulation, because some of this could be done by regulation. Some of it will have to be done by legislation and some of it has to be done by way of cooperation with the provinces and our neighbour to the south, the United States.
We need to build corridors in order to preserve any number of species. Some of those corridors go down into the United States. A good number of them go east and west across provincial boundaries and cross into areas where there are provincial parks. We need to develop a much more efficient system of working with the provinces and the United States to assure that those corridors will be established and will be maintained so that we stop losing the habitat for so many of our species.
We can point as one example to the grizzly population in Banff which is under very severe threat because the gene pool is so limited. There is not enough diversity in that gene pool and we badly need to develop a corridor for the grizzlies within that park so that they would be able to move in and out in a much more natural and effective way to maintain that gene pool.
Similarly, there are a number of areas that we need to work on with the provinces because we need to protect the area adjacent to our national parks. We have, in a number of places, quite significant suburban types of development, large developments going in immediately adjacent to parks and putting significant pressure on the national parks. We need to be working with the provinces around land use control in order to ensure that there are buffer areas that are natural or semi-natural, that will act as a buffer for our national parks.
We have to be very clear that we will not allow incompatible usages in our parks, whether it is mining or forestry, and we can go down the list. I mentioned earlier the use of explosives in the exploration for mineral resources in marine conservation areas. It is extremely detrimental to the natural species that inhabit those areas and we need to put an end to the ability of the private sector to do that.
In a number of cases, that is work that can be done within the national government, but there are other times when assistance is required in cooperation with the provinces. Therefore, we need to be developing more extensively our relationships in that regard.
In conclusion, we recognize that this is a housekeeping bill. It is one that we as a party are going to support because we badly need to have that champion, that advocate for the parks that has been so sorely missed in the last 11 to 12 years under this Liberal administration. We need that person and we need that person to do the job, which is to fight hard to ensure that protections are there and that the funds to develop and protect the parks are in place.
We will support the bill, but we are also asking the government to give serious consideration to additional regulations, legislation and the diplomacy that we need to build with other jurisdictions.
The Speaker: Is the House ready for the question?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Question.
The Speaker: The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: On division.
The Speaker: I declare the motion carried.
(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed)
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from November 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, an act to establish the Department of Social Development and to amend and repeal certain related Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Hon. Maria Minna (Beaches—East York, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this legislation is important because it reflects some of our most deeply held values: the belief, for instance, that all Canadians deserve a chance to live rich and rewarding lives, and the genuine concern that our communities express for our most vulnerable members, including children, seniors and people with disabilities.
Bill C-22, which would create the Department of Social Development Canada, is a vehicle through which we can achieve a most worthy goal: to help Canadians translate their ideals into meaningful and effective actions on behalf of the society we all share.
The bill would give legal effect to a transformation that began last December when the former Human Resources Development Canada department was split into two departments, including this new Department of Social Development Canada. Building on the many highly successful programs and services long delivered by HRDC, Social Development Canada intends to become a centre of expertise in social policy and programs which will ensure that Canada maintains and indeed surpasses our global reputation as a caring nation.
The mandate of the new SDC is to secure and strengthen Canada's social foundations while respecting the jurisdictions of all levels of government. Its vision is to create a country where everyone plays an active role.
To strengthen Canada's social foundations, SDC will work with its partners to promote the social well-being of and income security for Canadians. In concrete terms, Social Development Canada will focus on the social needs of Canadians, whether that be through income security or other types of programs and services. While all Canadians stand to benefit equally, the department will have a particular focus on children, people with disabilities, seniors, families and caregivers, and the voluntary and not for profit sector.
Let me emphasize that Social Development Canada is hardly alone in this. Indeed, in pursuit of its mission, it is working closely with other federal departments and other levels of government and is actively engaged with non-governmental organizations and communities.
I would also underscore that the legislation before us casts nothing in stone. As proposed, the department would be a living, breathing entity ready to respond to our needs and evolve along with them. In the next few minutes, permit me to outline some of the new department's key priorities.
Let us begin with children, our most vulnerable resource. As you know, Mr. Speaker, my government is committed to ensuring that every child has an opportunity to attain his or her own potential. With our partners, the Government of Canada is pursuing a comprehensive strategy to support families with children. Since 1998 a cornerstone of this strategy has been the successful national child benefit, a flexible tax relief program that helped lift 55,000 children out of poverty in the first two years alone.
All children, no matter what their circumstances, deserve an opportunity to learn and develop even before they reach school age. That is why the Speech from the Throne observed that the time has come for a truly national system of early learning and child care, a system based on the four key principles of quality, universality, accessibility and development.
I also believe that it should be a publicly administered and not for profit system and that these objectives need to be entrenched in a legislative framework. That way, each province and territory will be able to address its own particular needs within the national framework. There is broad consensus that affordable and accessible child care is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity for Canadian working families, whether headed by one parent or two. We therefore want to work with our partners to respond to this reality. My government will also be investing $5 billion toward the reality of this program over the next five years.
Persons with disabilities are another priority for SDC. We are working to level the playing field for people with disabilities to ensure that Canadians with disabilities have the same chances others do to achieve and succeed in our country. We recognize that they have abilities that differ from others and we want to support them in achieving their full potential.
Social Development Canada delivers Canada pension plan benefits for people with disabilities, along with programs such as the opportunities fund. Under the new labour market agreements for persons with disabilities, the Government of Canada contributes funding to provinces for programs and services to promote the full participation of Canadians with disabilities in the labour market.
With respect to seniors, our focus is on active living. We provide seniors with the support they need to be active participants in their communities. Again, Social Development Canada has programs to achieve that purpose. Nearly five million Canadians receive benefits through the Canada pension plan and the old age security program. Many more are helped out of poverty through the guaranteed income supplement, which my government has already promised to increase by up to $400 for a single person and up to $700 for a couple.
I am particularly enthusiastic about another program spearheaded by Social Development Canada. Known as New Horizons for Seniors, it will work with partners to develop activities that keep seniors fully engaged in their communities.
Canadians have also told us that providing support to families and family caregivers needs to be a priority of the Government of Canada. Indeed, family caregiving is a growing issue as more and more Canadians enter the “sandwich generation”, those with the dual role of raising their children while being an informal caregiver to an aging parent or a person with a disability.
The Government of Canada recognizes the vital role of Canadians who care for aged or infirm relatives or those with severe disabilities and is committed to helping people better balance work and family responsibilities, and it recognizes the important contribution of caregivers in Canadian society. That is why the government will be investing $1 billion in the family caregiver program.
The social economy is a venerable tradition in Canadian communities. We think of co-operatives, credit unions, community economic development associations and a lot of non-profit groups. Canada's not for profit organizations, community groups and volunteers are major partners in building strong and resilient communities. They fill a growing and very real need in Canadian society.
That is why SDC is an enthusiastic supporter of the social development partnerships program and the voluntary sector initiative, measures that reach out to the more than 161,000 not for profit organizations and six million volunteers who work so selflessly to strengthen the social fabric of Canada.
In all of its programs, SDC believes it is crucial to work with partners: the provinces and territories, of course, the municipalities, not for profit groups and agencies, and the voluntary and not for profit sector. This collaborative approach recognizes that many social programs are shared jurisdictions. It also increases capacity throughout the community in both the private and the voluntary and not for profit sector
I am pleased to support the bill.
The Speaker: The hon. member has completed her remarks, so there will be an opportunity for questions and comments following statements by members, on which we are now about to embark.

Statements By Members
Canadian RangersMs. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, my constituent Peter Kuniliusie of Clyde River has retired after 52 years of service as a Canadian Ranger. Peter Kuniliusie was the longest serving Canadian Ranger when he finally retired at the age of 74 due to health reasons.
The Canadian Rangers are famous throughout the north for their search and rescue abilities and their contributions to our sovereignty and assertions in Canada's north.
From September 8, 1952 to November 3, 2004, unilingual Peter Kuniliusie, in his role as a Canadian Ranger, defended Canada during the cold war and asserted sovereignty over our vast north. I congratulate Peter Kuniliusie on his long service and wish him a happy retirement.
I also want to take the opportunity to thank him for his contributions and the sharing of his traditional knowledge to the people around him, whether it was with the Canadian Forces or with the young people of not only his community but all the north. I thank his family, too, for sharing him with us.
Banting HomesteadMs. Helena Guergis (Simcoe—Grey, CPC): Mr. Speaker, Canada's first Nobel Prize winner, Sir Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin, was born on a farm located in New Tecumseth in my riding of Simcoe--Grey. Thanks to his discovery, today diabetics worldwide enjoy a normal quality of life.
Edward Banting left the property to the Ontario Historical Society to maintain, preserve and protect as a place of historical significance. Instead, the OHS has allowed the buildings to deteriorate. The roof of the farmhouse leaks and the house is not insured.
I held a press conference at the homestead on October 29 and offered to work with the OHS to preserve this historic site. OHS lawyers responded by threatening to charge all those present with trespassing.
There are rumours that the OHS plans to sell off the land to a developer. I have requested a meeting with the Minister of Canadian Heritage to save this historic landmark. I look forward to her timely response.
Family PhysiciansMr. Michael Savage (Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, this is Family Doctor Week in Canada. It is also the 50th anniversary of the College of Family Physicians.
The family doctor has been called the pillar of health care in Canada. As we strive to ensure the sustainability of our cherished health system, we need to make certain that we have a system that recognizes and supports the vital work of our GPs.
As the son of a family doctor, I know the burdens placed upon them. They work tirelessly on our behalf and they are the face of health for most Canadians, but the burdens on our family doctors are significant. The workload is staggering and the compensation has not kept up with the times. We must do more to ensure that these key caregivers are supported. We must ensure that more are trained in our medical schools.
We are privileged in my riding to have some of the most capable health professionals as family doctors. I am speaking of people like Dr. Jake O'Connor, former Canadian family physician of the year, and Dr. Louise Cloutier, chair of the board of the Canadian Medical Association, both of whom are actively involved in their community and in the fight for better health for Canadians.
We thank our family doctors for their commitment and their service.
Tourist IndustryMr. Robert Bouchard (Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, BQ): Mr. Speaker, in 2000, the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean tourism association took part in a Canadian pilot project on extending the tourist season.
Its purpose was to make it possible for tourism industry workers to work for longer periods and the industry to open new markets.
Unfortunately, this program has not been renewed for the next two years, although doing so would enable 180 workers and 35 companies to reach the break-even point. I cannot understand why the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is delaying the go-ahead on this program, which has already proven itself, costs a mere $600,000 and has generated $4 million in spin-offs.
The minister needs to give the go-ahead right away to these workers who are worried at seeing the agreement termination date of December 10 approaching. This is an opportunity for the government to demonstrate its desire to contribute to the development of the regions of Quebec.
Tantramar Regional High SchoolHon. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago I spent time at the Tantramar Regional High School in Sackville, New Brunswick. I was invited to meet John Fougere's grade 12 political science class, something I have done and have enjoyed doing over the last number of years.
These young men and women demonstrated an outstanding interest in Canada's political affairs and showed great confidence in the future of not only their region in southeastern New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada but all of Canada as well. Their questions and comments convinced me of the impressive quality of education offered at the Tantramar Regional High School and, in particular, the dedication and insight of their political science teacher, John Fougere.
Our future is in good hands when I think of these impressive young men and women in Sackville, New Brunswick, and their dedication to building a prosperous future for all Canadians.
Engineering ScholarshipsMr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation was founded to help attract women to the engineering profession. Each year this foundation awards scholarships to extraordinary young Canadians in engineering to assist them in pursuing their academic careers.
Funding for the foundation comes from the corporate sector as well as from thousands of individuals from across our great country. One of the key supporters is the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, the national organization that licenses Canada's 160,000 professional engineers.
Today I wish to acknowledge a constituent of mine, Ms. Vassa Reentova, a student at the University of Calgary, who was selected as one of only five engineering students from across Canada to receive an undergraduate engineering scholarship from the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation. I want to wish her congratulations, along with the other scholarship award winners.
I also wish to congratulate the foundation for investing in the education of young Canadians and instilling in them the value of pursuing a career in engineering.
The Greatest CanadianMr. Lloyd St. Amand (Brant, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the citizens of Brant are rightfully proud of the fact that two of the 10 finalists in the Greatest Canadian contest have a very substantial connection to Brant. Wayne Gretzky was born and raised in Brantford, and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in Brantford. There are other persons of tremendous accomplishment who were connected to Brant, including many women.
I wish to inform the House about Dr. Emily Stowe who was named the first female physician in Canada. As a pioneer suffragette, she was instrumental in establishing the vote for women in Canada.
Adelaide Hoodless Hunter was born outside of St. George, Ontario. She was one of Canada's most creative social reformers, a primary participant in the establishment of the Women's Institute, the National Council of Women in Canada, the Victorian Order of Nurses, and the YMCA.
Pauline Johnson was born and raised on the Six Nations Reserve and was the first native poet to have her work published in Canada.
Simply put, Brant takes great pride in the accomplishments of all of its citizens.
Maison SimonsMr. Roger Clavet (Louis-Hébert, BQ): Mr. Speaker, recently the people of Quebec City learned that La Maison Simons was making a gift to the city for its 400th anniversary. The gift is a fountain that has been restored and imported from France, where it was located in Bordeaux's allées de Tourny, named after Aubert Tourny, a French intendant remembered for his contribution to the beautification of Bordeaux, Quebec City's sister city.
The fontaine de Tourny, which was constructed in the mid-19th century, won a gold medal at the Paris world exposition of 1855.
Peter Simons, the president of La Maison Simons, fell in love with this fountain when he saw it in a French antique dealer's. He could see it in Quebec's capital. The Government of Quebec, its national capital commission and the city of Quebec were delighted to accept this gift, and express their thanks to the Simons family for this gracious gesture on the occasion of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City.
The Bloc Québécois congratulates the Simons family for its generous donation of such a wonderful gift.
Herring FisheryHon. Lawrence MacAulay (Cardigan, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, another disaster is looming in the Atlantic fishery as midshore seiners continue to fish herring off the north shore of Prince Edward Island, putting the homing stock in danger and threatening the livelihood of local fishermen.
In 1984 the herring line was moved closer to shore allowing the seiners to fish where they never should have been permitted to fish. It is time for the minister and the government to do the right thing, the right thing for the conservation of the resource, the right thing for local fishermen. It is time to restore the original 25 fathom line.
The inshore herring fishery has been a healthy and valuable resource not only to the families and communities who depend upon it directly, but also to the valuable lobster industry in Prince Edward Island.
Time is running out for the government on this important matter which affects the economy of Prince Edward Island. Islanders need action and they need it now.
Drug StrategyMr. Randy White (Abbotsford, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the government tabled Bill C-17, decriminalization of marijuana, in the House. This bill applies to children over the age of 11 in this nation. Children will have discounts on fines, and in fact, according to the justice department, they will likely not have to pay fines at all.
On the other hand, crystal meth, ecstasy, cocaine and heroin run rampant through the streets in this country. To combat that, the government has thought of a program called injection sites where individuals can bring drugs in and shoot up, a bubble zone where nobody will tackle the drug issue at all.
Does this sound like a government that knows what it is doing? Does this sound like a government that actually has a legitimate national drug strategy? Does this sound like a government that should stay in power? Then let us do something about it. Let us change the government.
National Arts Centre OrchestraHon. David Anderson (Victoria, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the National Arts Centre Orchestra, led by maestro Pinchas Zukerman, on its return from a splendid tour of British Columbia which culminated in a concert in my riding of Victoria last Thursday evening.
The two week tour consisted of four evening concerts, student matinees, and over 80 educational student events involving teaching of children, with special emphasis on first nations children in communities all across British Columbia.
Thanks go out to Canadian National, Yamaha and many other sponsors who made this tour possible.
Bravo to the National Arts Centre Orchestra for taking its talent on the road and delighting audiences throughout British Columbia.
Sikh CommunityHon. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Speaker, today members of the Canadian Sikh community will be protesting at the French embassy the new French laws which prohibit the wearing of turbans, among other religious items that apply to other religions.
I want to rise to indicate the support of the NDP for this protest and to celebrate the fact that we do things differently here in Canada, most of the time. One of the things we could do which would be helpful to affirm the fact that we do things differently here in Canada would be to finally pass a motion which I introduced in a previous Parliament and which was introduced in the last Parliament by the member for Winnipeg North Centre to affirm the importance of the five Ks to the Sikh community and the contribution of the Sikh community to Canada.
This is a motion that almost passed but it was not votable under a previous private members' business regime. I understand that my House leader will be initiating discussions with other House leaders. Perhaps very soon we could have a motion affirming the five Ks in this House and show that we are indeed a different country.
Courage CampaignMr. Guy Lauzon (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, CPC): Mr. Speaker, on November 23, some 200 people attended a special dinner in Cornwall in my riding of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry. This dinner was in support of the first annual Courage Campaign which has raised $11,000 for the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre Foundation.
The Kinsmen Club of Cornwall donated $5,000 and the dinner raised another $6,000. All of the money raised will go toward a project to double the size of the hospital. The keynote speaker, CJOH news personality Max Keeping, praised the people of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry for their caring and their generosity.
The Courage Campaign will continue until December 15. I encourage everyone in eastern Ontario to lend their support to this excellent cause.
Canadian Broadcasting CorporationMr. Raynald Blais (Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the recent reorganization of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands.
Budgets for CBC radio correspondents in Chaleur Bay and the Magdalen Islands were cut, and now the CBC just transferred its correspondent for the Chaleur Bay region to its facilities in Matane, moving him more than 200 kilometres away.
Rather than promoting regional development, the CBC prefers to abandon the regions. Yet, in September 2004, its CEO, Robert Rabinovitch, said that the CBC had a duty to provide a balanced and high-quality information service on which all Canadians could rely.
The Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands deserve better. This situation must be corrected and it must be corrected quickly.
Post-Secondary EducationMr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, post-secondary education costs are skyrocketing. Many of our future teachers, nurses and engineers are being forced to forgo career dreams simply because they cannot afford the high cost of tuition.
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations has put together a list of recommendations that will assist Canadians from low income backgrounds to obtain an education that could in turn provide a brighter financial future. Among those is a recommendation to provide funding through a dedicated Canadian education transfer.
These recommendations come from those who are directly affected by the increasing costs of education, the students. These are people who want to better themselves and the future of Canada through education. They also want to see that all Canadians, regardless of their financial situation, have the same opportunities.
Maybe the Liberal government should take a lesson or two from Canada's post-secondary students.
Arthur HaileyMr. Wajid Khan (Mississauga—Streetsville, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, yesterday we learned the sad news of the passing of internationally renowned author Arthur Hailey.
Born in England in 1920, Arthur Hailey began his writing career while a Royal Air Force pilot during the second world war. After the war, Arthur Hailey moved to Canada, became a Canadian citizen and began writing television screenplays.
It was in Canada that Arthur Hailey wrote Flight into Danger , his first television screenplay. It was broadcast live on the CBC in 1956 and later in England and the United States to huge audiences and great acclaim.
Building on his success in television, Arthur Hailey moved on to write novels. In total, Mr. Hailey wrote 11 novels about ordinary people facing extraordinary ordeals. Hailey's novels include international bestsellers Hotel, Airport and Detective .
On behalf of the Government of Canada, I salute Arthur Hailey.

Oral Question Period
Citizenship and ImmigrationMr. Peter MacKay (Central Nova, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has told the Toronto Star that the Prime Minister is totally supportive.
We know the minister enabled a stripper with an expired work permit who was working in her campaign office to jump the queue by granting a ministerial permit. We also know the minister's right-hand man visited a strip club to facilitate the immigration of women to work there.
Do the minister's comments mean that the Prime Minister is totally supportive of queue jumping and ministerial staff processing immigration applications in a strip club and in a Liberal campaign office?
Hon. Anne McLellan (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, what the Prime Minister finds disturbing, as do I and other members of the House, are the ongoing unsubstantiated allegations and character assassinations by members of the opposition.
The opposition for many years has called for an independent Ethics Commissioner. We now have an independent Ethics Commissioner. I think it behooves all of us in the House to let the commissioner do his work. He will issue a report. That report will be made public.
Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, we are also calling for ethical behaviour from the minister and ministerial accountability.
The member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre has said he was afraid to ask a question in the House of Commons because of calls he received from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's staff. He said it was implied that representations on behalf of constituents would be denied if he questioned the minister about the permit that was given to the stripper who worked in her campaign office.
The Prime Minister has said he is totally supportive. Does this mean that the Prime Minister is totally supportive of ministers of his government intimidating members of Parliament from asking questions in the House?
Anne McLellan: Mr. Speaker, again what the hon. member and the opposition party are doing is involving themselves in character assassinations and unsubstantiated allegations.
We have a process. It is an independent process. The Ethics Commissioner will in fact review this matter. He will issue a report. That report will be made public. I would ask the hon. members on the other side to stop the outrageous assertions that they are making that destroy potentially--
The Speaker: The hon. member for Central Nova.
Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre has raised a number of questions with respect to the expense accounts of the minister's office. He has asked why there were expense charges in one city while a staff member was actually in another. The member has asked as well why the website documenting this inaccuracy of expenses was changed.
The minister has stated that the Prime Minister is totally supportive. Can the minister clarify this to mean that the Prime Minister is totally supportive of bogus expense claims and cover-ups?
Hon. Judy Sgro (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member had taken the time to look at the French website, he would have seen very clearly that this issue was correct all along. It is the same old Reform-Alliance party continuing to make discriminatory remarks against people and allegations that are clearly unfounded.
In answer to his earlier question about my staff, let me say that I have two of the finest young men working for me and I deny any allegations. If we are guilty of anything, it is because we are trying to be too kind to all of those guys over there.
Helena Guergis: Mr. Speaker, the immigration minister says on one hand that the stripper program is necessary to protect women, yet on the other hand she says the program is exploiting women and should be stopped. Which is it? Can she please explain her hypocrisy?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that there is a woman standing and asking some of these questions.
Let me say that when it comes to standing up for women's rights, we on this side of the House are going to make sure that women's rights are front and centre. When we talk about issues of exploitation of women or anything to do with threats against women, we are going to be standing up for them. I will never stop doing that.
Helena Guergis: Mr. Speaker, my question is really very simple. I would appreciate it if the minister would stop dancing around the subject. Why are legitimate claimants left waiting in line while the minister allows queue jumping under a program that she says she does not support?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, I was very clear. There was no queue jumping. There was an individual married to a Canadian citizen working in an industry that she no longer wanted to work in. I assisted her on the merits of that application under humanitarian and compassionate grounds, and in spite of all of those guys and their accusations for the past two weeks, I would do it again today.
The EnvironmentMs. Monique Guay (Rivière-du-Nord, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the former Minister of the Environment made very harsh comments about the government and criticized the behaviour of his colleagues, calling them industry cheerleaders and lobbyists.
In light of this very severe criticism by his former colleague, what is the Minister of the Environment waiting for to draft a plan to implement the Kyoto protocol based on the territorial approach?
Hon. Stéphane Dion (Minister of the Environment, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in 2002 the Government of Canada implemented an action plan to reduce greenhouse gases. This action plan has led to 241 measures so far, and soon it will be my pleasure to announce a new one, in conjunction with the Minister of Public Works. We are continuing to improve this plan, because it is very important for Canada to do its part for the good of the planet.
Monique Guay: Mr. Speaker, what lies behind the government's refusal to act and lack of goodwill is a pro-industry bias.
If the minister is as determined as he says, then why is he reluctant to announce the plan to implement the Kyoto protocol based on the territorial approach, which is far more in line with the polluter-pay principle?
Stéphane Dion: Mr. Speaker, we continually need to do more because this is an extremely important issue. This very week I was in Iceland at the Arctic Council, and all the council members agreed to work together to help this part of the world, which is directly affected by climate change. I must point out that our American friends signed this agreement along with all the members of the Arctic Council.
Mr. Bernard Bigras (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, BQ): Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of the Environment expressed his complete confidence that the Minister of Natural Resources would implement an effective and equitable plan to meet the Kyoto objectives.
As Minister of the Environment responsible for sustainable development, can he explain how a company like Ford, which has received $100 million in assistance, has not been required to meet stricter pollution emission standards in its manufacturing process?
Stéphane Dion: Mr. Speaker, we are currently negotiating with the auto industry in order to improve automobile energy efficiency by 25% and we are determined to get results. The Minister of Natural Resources and I have said very clearly that there will be a reduction in auto industry greenhouse gases. The industry will do its part.
Bernard Bigras: Mr. Speaker, the technology exists and all that remains to be done is for Canada to adopt stricter regulations, as California did earlier this month.
Will the Minister of the Environment agree to quickly bring in regulations on vehicle manufacturing aimed at reducing vehicle pollution by 25%? If the federal government wants to be serious about Kyoto, let it take action right now.
Stéphane Dion: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Natural Resources and I have each had occasion to say how excellent we think the California initiative is in this matter. Other American states are also considering adopting California's regulations, which are along the lines of what we want to do in Canada. I have said that I will be going to California soon for more detailed discussions with the state government.
National DefenceMr. Jack Layton (Toronto—Danforth, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence.
Canadians are increasingly opposing George Bush's star wars project in missile defence. Now, incredibly, we learn that the Prime Minister will not even raise the issue with the president when he is here in Canada. This is shocking.
The fact is that this program will put weapons into space. The Prime Minister likes to pretend that he does not know this fact.
Will the Prime Minister at least ask the President what the facts are when they meet here in Ottawa next week?
Hon. Bill Graham (Minister of National Defence, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and the government has made it very clear that discussions are going on in Washington, but there is no pressure from either side to engage in a political discussion around this at this time.
I want to assure the House and tell the hon. member that I was present when the Prime Minister raised it in his meeting with Mr. Bush earlier this year. He made it very clear that Canada will never participate in any system of any kind that means the weaponization of space. The United States knows that is our policy and the Prime Minister has made that clear on many occasions.
The EnvironmentJack Layton: Mr. Speaker, ignorance of the facts does not make them go away. The evidence is absolutely there and incontrovertible.
My next question is for the Minister of the Environment.
It is very interesting that we find Canada supporting the George Bush administration in Iceland in agreeing finally that the facts of climate change are incontrovertible.
However, why did Canada side with the U.S. in making sure that the recommendations of the scientists for an action plan were not adopted, once again, offside with Canadians?
Stéphane Dion: Mr. Speaker, indeed, we have been able to convince our American friends to be with the other members of the Arctic Council for the first time in a long time. I want to say to the member that all four countries have agreed to act on it.
We have an action plan where each country will choose what it wants to do in order to address the issue. We will work with the other countries in order to have well coordinated action.
Citizenship and ImmigrationMrs. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, CPC): Mr. Speaker, every year thousands of women apply to come to Canada to escape persecution. The line is long but they patiently wait.
Women from around the world are trying to escape war, famine and disease but they must wait in line while exotic dancers get preferential treatment by the minister.
Why do some women get special treatment while the rest are treated so unfairly?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, someone referred to me yesterday as the minister of hopes and dreams, and that is exactly what I intend to be. We on this side of the House are working toward helping people to realize those dreams. We are looking at our immigration system and looking at bringing it into the 21st century. We are proud of the work we are doing on this side of the House.
I look forward to working with all parliamentarians as we move forward to an even more successful immigration plan in this country.
Mr. Gerald Keddy (South Shore—St. Margaret's, CPC): Mr. Speaker, yesterday, at the request of the Deputy Prime Minister, evidence was tabled proving that information was altered on the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's website. However the minister continues to state that the information is accurate when we know her website was altered to cover up double billing by her chief of staff.
The Deputy Prime Minister asked for and received the evidence. Now it is up to the Deputy Prime Minister to explain this ridiculous and juvenile behaviour.
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, it amazes me that this sacred House is used to throw such allegations all over the place.
I want to read the following, which I will table in the House. It states:

Following questions raised with respect to the former Chief of Staff's trip...the Finance Branch realized that the destination and purpose regarding this trip had been incorrectly reported on the departmental web site. The trip was reported on the English language web-page as a trip to Toronto and on the French language web-page as a trip to Ottawa.

If they had clearly looked and used their bilingualism and their efforts to improve their French language they would have read that correctly.
Mr. Charlie Penson (Peace River, CPC): Mr. Speaker, while the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration's chief of staff was rendezvousing with an owner of a strip club, other members of her staff were busy intimidating opposition MPs.
The message from the minister's staff was clear: opposition MPs would not want something unfortunate to happen to the applications from their ridings. It would be much safer for them to sit down and shut up.
Should all MPs who criticize misconduct by the minister and her staff expect to be put on a ministerial hit list?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, once again the members of the opposition are throwing unsubstantiated allegations. They simply read the morning newspaper and decide what allegations they will throw while they have the immunity of this House.
Let me repeat that there were no violations of the Privacy Act and the two young men who were reported on in that article are two of the finest young men I have ever met.
Mr. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC): Mr. Speaker, how can they keep saying that this matter is before the Ethics Commissioner when these are brand new reports? The lines must really be humming between the minister's office and the ethics office.
Today's reports indicate that the minister's staff read the member for Winnipeg Centre a list of applications from his riding and implied they would be denied if he attacked her in the House for her role in fast tracking visas for strippers.
These new tactics further undermine the credibility of the minister. Does the Deputy Prime Minister support and condone these actions?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, it is really unfortunate that we are spending so much of this important question period time not talking about the issues that are of concern to Canadians, but simply picking up whatever garbage is in the newspaper and throwing it around because we have immunity in this place.
Let us get on to talking about the issues that matter to Canadians. Let us talk about the health care issues and all the positive things we are doing in this country.
The Speaker: Order, please. A number of private conversations are going on in the House and it makes it very hard for the person answering or asking questions to hear himself think and for the Speaker to hear a word.
I would suggest that perhaps someone like the hon. member for Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam and perhaps the President of the Treasury Board could have a very useful discussion outside the doors at the far end. I am sure the member for Central Nova would be happy to go and act as chairman for their discussion out there.
In the meantime, we will go on with question period now. The hon. member for Montcalm.
Agriculture and Agri-FoodMr. Roger Gaudet (Montcalm, BQ): Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the Quebec National Assembly, the Quebec minister of agriculture, fisheries and food asked the federal government to transfer all the powers necessary to establish a selling price for all meat and cull cattle slaughtered in Quebec.
Does the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food intend to reply favourably to this request?
Hon. Andy Mitchell (Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we are working very closely with the Government of Quebec, as well as with producers in the province, as well as, quite frankly, with producers right across Canada on the particular issue of cull animals. Those discussions have been progressing and we will continue with them.
Let me say very clearly that we understand that there is a specific issue that exists that producers need to deal with and we are prepared to continue to do the work necessary so that we can address it.
Roger Gaudet: Mr. Speaker, the federal minister refuses to act; he refuses to set a floor price for all of Canada; and he still has not answered the request from the Quebec minister of agriculture, fisheries and food.
Does his refusal mean that the minister prefers to protect the interests of the abattoir, which has given more than $45,000 to his party?
Andy Mitchell: Mr. Speaker, as I have said many times in the House, under business risk management, specifically for the Province of Quebec, we provided some $366 million.
On the issue of slaughter capacity, on September 10 we put forward a very specific program that will assist in the development of new slaughter capacity. In reality the long term and medium term solution for the situation that exists in Quebec is to create new slaughter capacity within a competitive environment, and that is what we are working toward.
Citizenship and ImmigrationMrs. Carole Lavallée (Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, BQ): Mr. Speaker, we were quite surprised to say the least to learn of the existence of an immigration program that gives exotic dancers priority entry into Canada.
How does the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration justify the existence of such a program, which provides workers to an industry that blatantly exploits women?
Anne McLellan: Mr. Speaker, as I said yesterday and as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said yesterday, this program is under review. The government expects that the Ministers of Citizenship and Immigration and the Minister of Human Resources will review this program in the very near term.
I understand the objections and the concerns raised by all members on all sides of the House in relation to this particular program. It is time this program was reviewed and it will be.
Carole Lavallée: Mr. Speaker, while thousands of immigration applications have been waiting for months, even years, the minister gives preference to exotic dancers under the pretext that there is a shortage of workers in this field.
How can the minister justify her haste to satisfy the demand of this industry and refuse to give priority to much more urgent matters?
Judy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, we have a labour market needs assessment that is done through my colleague at HRSD. We have an industry whether we like it or approve of it. I clearly know that there are some members on the other side who clearly approve of this industry because apparently they frequent it quite often. However let me say that there is an industry in this country that has a need and we have an obligation to fulfill that need whether I like it or not either.
Rail TransportationMr. Pierre Poilievre (Nepean—Carleton, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport promoted himself from lobbyist to radio announcer to urban planner. But Jean-Claude Marsan, a respected professor at Université de Montréal, does not share his speculative views on CP, which he considers a backwards 19th century vision, like the Liberals' attitude about Mirabel.
Is the minister trying to favour friends of his riding at all costs?
Hon. Reg Alcock (President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to answer this question on behalf of the minister. As the former chair of the transport committee, I can tell hon. members that the minister is working very hard to resolve issues across the country. He has made a decision relative to the transfer of these lands. The government is well satisfied with that and with the work he is doing.
Mirabel AirportMr. James Moore (Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the transport minister's two trademarks are land speculation and arrogance. Yesterday, he talked about confiscating agricultural land to give it to Bombardier, on top of the 5,200 acres it already has.
Is our reverse Robin Hood going to increase the burden on Mirabel farmers, or will he pledge to continue paying to the City of Mirabel the $2 million collected in taxes by the airport?
Reg Alcock: Mr. Speaker, it is really important to understand that what the minister is doing, as the Minister of Transport is charged, is working back and forth across the country on behalf of the Government of Canada and the people of Canada and making decisions on the use of the transportation resources. He has done that in this case.
JusticeMrs. Joy Smith (Kildonan—St. Paul, CPC): Mr. Speaker, a recent study revealed that almost 30% of 15 to 17 year olds and 47% of 18 to 19 year olds have used marijuana in the past year. It is easier to get marijuana on to schoolyards than it is to get cigarettes and alcohol. Yet the government is putting forth legislation that will decriminalize marijuana.
Does the government really believe this is the right direction for the youth of our country?
Hon. Irwin Cotler (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's question. We are concerned with the youth of the country. Therefore, we propose legislation for the purposes of decriminalizing a younger generation, but making the point that marijuana use remains illegal and will continue to be illegal. We have done this with the drug education program warning about the hazards of marijuana use, and now with toughened legislation with regard to the control of marijuana.
Public SafetyMr. James Bezan (Selkirk—Interlake, CPC): Mr. Speaker, this month a man was beaten to death with a 2x4 outside a townhouse in a city in my riding. Two of the offenders were in parole violation, and one of these parolees has just been charged with rape and incest.
The government continues to allow violent and dangerous offenders out of prison and back on our streets without rehabilitation or monitoring.
How can the government claim to be protecting public safety, when it cannot keep tabs on its violent offenders? When will the Liberals put an end to the revolving doors in our prisons?
Anne McLellan: Mr. Speaker, first, we have a corrections and parole system that is one of the best in the world. However, I have indicated that I am willing to undertake a review of aspects of our parole system. The parole board may need more resources to do its job. I am more than willing to have the justice committee of the House of Commons take a look at this issue.
I have been very clear that our goal is public safety. If the system is not maximizing our commitment to public safety--
The Speaker: The hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche.
Foreign AffairsMr. Jean-Claude D'Amours (Madawaska—Restigouche, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
At the Francophonie summit, the Prime Minister referred to the responsibility to protect. What is the Government of Canada doing to promote this concept?
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleagues know, “The Responsibility to Protect” is the title of the final report of an expert panel struck by Canada to study the issue of humanitarian response.
Our objective is to ensure that the international community has both the tools and the will to respond to future tragedies such as the ones in Darfur and Rwanda. Our efforts are starting to pay off. Now, we are hoping that the United Nations will adopt the principles as its own. The Prime Minister, our officials and I are striving to achieve the necessary consensus on this objective in support of the responsibility to protect.
Softwood LumberMr. Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP): Mr. Speaker, next week Canada's Prime Minister has a chance to do right by Canadians.
Small communities in my riding have been desperately waiting for years now for the U.S. to lift its illegal tariff on softwood lumber. The courts have ruled, and industry knows it is coming. What is the government waiting for?
Will the Minister of Industry advise me on what to say to the families in my communities who are losing their homes because of Liberal inaction? Will he commit to go to the wall for them and demand that the Americans drop these tariffs and return 100% of the money they have illegally taken from British Columbians?
Pierre Pettigrew: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of International Trade has continued a wide strategy over softwood lumber, which is paying off for Canadians. We absolutely want to resolve the softwood lumber dispute that we have had with the United States for a long time. It is clear that the Prime Minister will raise it next week when the President visits us. I certainly have the intention of raising it with Secretary of State Colin Powell as well.
We will continue to fight for the softwood lumber producers of British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, producers across the country.
Textile and Clothing IndustryMr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, there are 43 garment manufacturers in my riding who want to keep their jobs in Canada, but they will close their doors if the Minister of Finance does not sign the duty remission orders which are sitting on his desk right now. Two separate unanimous reports from the finance committee directed him to sign these duty remission orders, as well as the Senate committee on banking.
Will the Minister of Finance sign these duty remission papers before they expire on December 31 and save thousands of Canadian jobs all over Canada and Quebec?
Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am fully aware of the timing considerations involved in this matter. I have received numerous representations from all aspects of the textile and apparel industry in Canada. I have received particularly strong representations from members of the government caucus who are extremely concerned about this situation. Obviously, decisions have to be made before the end of the year, and they will be.
Coast GuardMr. Gord Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the revenue minister.
On October 5 the minister stated that no jobs would be lost or services cut while the government finds a 5% savings in all departments. While this search for savings can be lauded, how does the minister justify recent and pending layoffs at the Coast Guard in the north and in Prescott, which will leave people out of work and vessels with no emergency coverage in Canada's Arctic?
Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, the expenditure review process of the government is not about cutting. The process is about reallocation. It is about looking at everything the Government of Canada does in a fresh and reinvigorating way to ensure that we are relevant, that we are excellent and that we address the priorities of this century, not just the priorities of the last century.
TaxationDavid Anderson: Mr. Speaker, in 2002 the Canada Revenue Agency skated into Saskatchewan. It was there to audit and to tax unpaid amateur hockey players on the money that was being paid to billets to feed and water the players. The Liberals ended up in the penalty box when a fight broke out. They stopped the audits, but they will not change the policy. I have introduced a private member's bill to correct this injustice.
My question is for the finance minister. Will he move ahead of my bill? Will he immediately move to amend the Income Tax Act to protect Saskatchewan junior hockey players and amateur athletes across Canada?
Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman will know that this issue arose as the result of a complaint by a junior hockey player with respect to his particular rights and interests. That has led to a number of investigations and inquiries.
Two things are particularly important: first, that the law be applied with absolute precision and equity everywhere in the country, with no favouritism and no discrimination anywhere; and second, that we be prepared to review the law to ensure that it is in tune with the times.
The hon. gentleman has tabled a bill. I will be interested to see what it says.
Canada-U.S. RelationsMr. Merv Tweed (Brandon—Souris, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the posters are up and graffiti is appearing on the streets in Ottawa. No, it is not a festival, but a planned demonstration on the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush to Ottawa. The slogan of the demonstration is, “When Bush comes to shove“. I am concerned this may be a call to violence.
Will the minister guarantee today the safety of all visiting dignitaries, Canadians and property, both public and private?
Anne McLellan: Mr. Speaker, the security of visitors to our country is a matter of key importance to all of us. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is working with the city of Ottawa police, DND and the OPP to ensure that President Bush and his party will be safe and secure while they are visiting our nation's capital.
We obviously are a nation that values freedom of expression. I would--
The Speaker: The hon. member for Edmonton--Leduc.
Music IndustryMr. James Rajotte (Edmonton—Leduc, CPC): Mr. Speaker, in 1996 the government signed the World Intellectual Property Organization treaty. The treaty was necessary to update our copyright laws to ensure that our artists such as Tom Cochrane, Amy Sky and Blue Rodeo received fair compensation for the music they create.
The Conservative Party supports amending our copyright laws to be in accordance with international standards.
Why has the government failed for six years to ratify the treaty? Does the government not realize that because of its delays and lack of leadership, it is putting at risk millions of dollars for the music industry and putting at risk the works that our artists, like Tom Cochrane, create for Canada?
Hon. Liza Frulla (Minister of Canadian Heritage and Minister responsible for Status of Women, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we have also met with members of the music industry. The whole copyright issue is indeed a critical one. We are currently drafting a copyright bill with the Minister of Industry. We intend to submit it to cabinet before Christmas, so that it can be referred to a committee during the next session.
Aerospace IndustryMr. Robert Carrier (Alfred-Pellan, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport, who is never short on demagogic rhetoric, claims that returning 11,000 acres of land to Mirabel farmers would jeopardize Bombardier's development. This is false. Bombardier has enough space to build its new aircraft in Mirabel, if it so wishes.
The real threat to Bombardier is a lack of federal assistance to help it develop its new aircraft in Quebec. What is the Minister of Industry waiting for to act?
Reg Alcock: Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member would know, these lands are part of the ground lease with Aéroports de Montréal. The minister has consulted with it. They have looked at the future needs of the airport and they have made a decision. That decision has been conveyed.
Robert Carrier: Mr. Speaker, Bombardier has enough space to develop its operations in Quebec. The company is only using one third of the 104 acres that it is currently leasing in Mirabel. Moreover, an adjacent lot of 222 acres is also available. What is not available though is a federal contribution to the development, in Quebec, of Bombardier's new aircraft.
What is the minister waiting for to announce his intentions and thus ensure the creation of 5,000 jobs in Quebec?
Hon. Scott Brison (Minister of Public Works and Government Services, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada is committed to Bombardier as it is committed to our nationwide aerospace industry, which employs 80,000 Canadians.
I can assure the hon. member that the long-standing commitment of the Government of Canada will continue to grow as Canada's aerospace industry continues to be a leader in the world.
Manufacturing IndustryMr. Gary Schellenberger (Perth—Wellington, CPC): Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry. Many manufacturing plants in my riding are concerned about the high Canadian dollar and the impact it is having on their businesses.
Companies in my riding like Honeywell-Fram, Richardson Foods and Nuhn Industries Ltd. are well managed and efficient.
What is the government doing to protect Canadian manufacturing jobs in light of the high Canadian dollar?
Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, as I identified in the fiscal statement of a week or 10 days ago, the rapid escalation in the value of the Canadian currency does pose a downside risk to growth in the future.
The Government of Canada is obviously anxious to foster the conditions that will encourage growth. That is why in the throne speech and in the fiscal statement we laid out a plan for productivity that we believe would help Canadian business and industry to move forward. That is why we are also prudent in the planning to ensure that nothing pushes us off our fiscal track.
Financial InstitutionsMr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the finance minister has been promising new guidelines for bank mergers for months now. Tens of billions of dollars have been tied up while investors try to figure out what the minister is doing.
Are we going to see these guidelines before Christmas? If not, when? What is the holdup?
Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman in asking the question was groping for his BlackBerry. I encourage him to deal with one thing at one time, which is what I propose to do with respect to the issue of mergers.
The issue is very much before the government. As indicated earlier, we are anxious to produce a statement that lays out the guidelines for going forward. At the moment, I am taking the time to speak directly with the chief executive officers of all the major financial institutions to collect their views.
Official LanguagesHon. Don Boudria (Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in her November 9 report, the Commissioner of Official Languages pointed out some serious shortcomings as far as official languages are concerned in our foreign missions. These included security services not being available in both languages, a large percentage of unilingual mission staff, and some English only websites.
What steps does the Minister of Foreign Affairs plan to take to remedy these very serious shortcomings?
Pierre Pettigrew: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for this important question. I am proud of our history and linguistic duality, which are among Canada's best features and assets internationally.
We constantly strive to improve the delivery of our services in both official languages. We have in excess of 160 missions throughout the world, and over 5,000 employees in those missions, so this is a major challenge.
Our foreign missions all provide services in both official languages, sometimes in difficult conditions. Consular services are always provided in French and English. Web pages for Canadians are always available in English and in French—
The Speaker: The hon. member for Calgary East.
Provincial Centennial ProjectsMr. Deepak Obhrai (Calgary East, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we have another example of the Liberal government ignoring the west.
In the past, the federal government has allocated funding to promote provincial centennial projects. Next year Alberta and Saskatchewan will be celebrating their centennials. As of today, there has been no allocation of funds to Alberta and Saskatchewan. Why?
Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, we are preparing a very thoughtful plan in consultation with the people in those two provinces. I am very pleased to reassure the hon. member that the Government of Canada will be participating vigorously in the anniversaries of those two provinces.
Drug StrategyMr. Randy Kamp (Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, CPC): Mr. Speaker, in the communities I represent, lives are being ruined. In fact, lives are being lost from the use of crystal meth. Hundreds of concerned citizens are participating in local campaigns to do something about this drug that is poisoning our children, but we are frustrated because of the lack of an effective drug strategy.
I know the government is focused on funding injection sites and decriminalizing marijuana. Can the Minister of Justice tell us what programs he has in place to help us combat the use of crystal meth?
Irwin Cotler: Mr. Speaker, the drug strategy is the responsibility of the Minister of Health. With respect to the Ministry of Justice, any matters that constitute a health hazard or are prejudicial to health, and constitute a criminal matter in that regard, we will fully explore those issues.
Regional Economic DevelopmentMr. Sébastien Gagnon (Jonquière—Alma, BQ): Mr. Speaker, leaders in the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region are setting up a major regional investment fund. There is strong support in the region for this initiative, in which the Government of Quebec is participating.
Instead of insisting on implementing a new structure that does not bring anything concrete to our region, as is the case with Bill C-9, will the government finally listen to the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean region and participate in this brilliant initiative?
Pierre Pettigrew: Mr. Speaker, I am sure my colleague from regional economic development always has the interests of all the regions of Quebec, especially those of Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, very close to his heart. He will certainly look into this matter when he gets back from the summit of the Francophonie.
SeniorsMr. Mario Silva (Davenport, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as members of the House know, the number of seniors is growing in our country. Seniors within my riding of Davenport and indeed across the country will want to know what the government plans to do to address issues of concern to them.
Could the Minister of State for Families and Caregivers assure seniors what action plan he plans to put in place?
Hon. Tony Ianno (Minister of State (Families and Caregivers), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the hon. member who has been working on this issue for many years.
The government has proclaimed in the Speech from the Throne that it will be working toward increasing the guaranteed income supplement for low income seniors. Social Development Canada will be taking the lead on issues related to seniors and working with other departments to ensure seniors live the kind of life that we all can dream of. Seniors have contributed tremendously to our country and we owe them that much.
IndustryJoe Comartin: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. We know the Chinese government wants to buy up our resource industries, a government with a terrible workers rights and environmental protection record. The Noranda mining company is a likely acquisition and now we learn that Husky Oil is coming next. The Prime Minister has said he thinks it is great that foreign governments are buying up our resource industries.
When it comes to a government with the kind of record that China has, does the Prime Minister still hold that same position?
Scott Brison: Mr. Speaker, Canada is a world leader in human rights. We will continue to be a world leader in human rights. We are committed to that. That is part of our social fabric as a country. It is a Canadian value that we promote around the world.
At the same time, we believe in fair and free trade with our trading partners. Canadian companies and investors continue to invest around the world. In fact, Canadian investors are taking leadership roles in countries around the world. We are proud of that.
The EnvironmentJames Rajotte: Mr. Speaker, the government has still not clarified to companies and industries across Canada its plans on the Kyoto accord. Many companies in fact took early action to reduce their emissions to take environmental leadership on this issue. They deserve credit for their leadership.
I want to ask the Minister of the Environment very clearly, and to be very specific to these companies and industries, will those companies that took early action before this House ratified Kyoto deserve credit for their emission reductions, yes or no?
Stéphane Dion: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important issue. The Government of Canada, especially the Minister of Natural Resources, for two years has been discussing this issue with the industry in order to have targets decreased, and that we will adjust with each industry, with the overall goal to have a decrease in the intensity of emissions by 15%. In doing so, Canada will play its role in order to decrease those gas emissions as a partner in the Kyoto protocol.
Arts and CultureMs. Pauline Picard (Drummond, BQ): Mr. Speaker, in November 2003, the Minister of Canadian Heritage said in my riding that discussions would be conducted with the executives of the Légendes fantastiques and the problem resolved, because this production is very important to Drummondville. And she added that the federal government has many envelopes and many subsidies unknown to the public in general.
One year later, in spite of repeated requests by the executives of the Légendes fantastiques, the problem remains unresolved and the subsidies remain unknown.
When does the minister plan to resolve this problem?
Liza Frulla: Mr. Speaker, I discussed this particular issue with the mayor of Drummondville perhaps three weeks ago.
The assistance provided to the Légendes fantastiques at the time came from two sources, namely the communications program and the sponsorship program. Everyone cashed in on this much maligned program. And now, everyone wishes it was still around.
I indicated to the mayor that we now have to check our programs. We have nothing right now, but we plan to be reviewing these programs to help—
The Speaker: As there is no one else on the list, this will bring an end to oral question period.

Routine Proceedings
Tabling of DocumentsJudy Sgro: Mr. Speaker, I would like to table in the House the document that I made reference to regarding the website.
Canadian Food Inspection Agency Enforcement ActAndy Mitchell: 
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-27, an act to regulate and prohibit certain activities related to food and other products to which the acts under the administration of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency apply and to provide for the administration and enforcement of those acts and to amend other acts in consequence.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Committees of the HouseJean-Claude D'Amours: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities on Bill C-5, an act to provide financial assistance for post-secondary education savings.
Don Boudria: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the 16th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Pursuant to provisional Standing Order 92.3, the committee recommends that Bill C-268, an act to confirm the definition of marriage and to preserve ceremonial rights, be designated non votable.
Alan Tonks: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development entitled “The Great Lakes Charter Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements”.
In accordance with its order of reference under Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on October 21, 2004, the committee has considered and held hearings on the subject matter of the Great Lakes Charter Annex 2001 Implementing Agreements and agreed to it on Thursday, November 25, 2004.
I would like to express appreciation to the members of the committee and those who made deputations as witnesses.
The subject matter deals with Annex 2001, which is an initiative dealing with the diversion of waters within the Great Lakes basin. This is a matter that has been of great urgency. In fact, the history of protecting boundary waters goes back to 1909 with the establishment of the International Joint Commission.
This is a consensus document. I would invite all members to read the document carefully. If there are questions of either the committee or individuals on the committee, I would certainly volunteer as chair of the committee to undertake to get responses to those questions. I thank the members of the House for their attention to this committee.
PetitionsDick Harris: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand today on behalf of hundreds of citizens from the town of Quesnel, B.C., in my riding, which supports the organization Citizens Against Sexual Exploitation which serves to protect children from sexual predators. Their petition draws the attention of the House to the fact that our children need protection from sexual exploitation.
Therefore, these petitioners from Quesnel, British Columbia, call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to raise the age of consent from 14 to 18.
The annual White Ribbon Campaign is very effective in supporting their cause. I would ask for unanimous consent to present this white ribbon as a symbol of their campaign as part of my petition.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): Does the member have unanimous consent to present this ribbon?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, CPC): Mr. Speaker it is indeed a pleasure for me to rise yet again to present another petition. This one is again on behalf of the citizens of Windsor, Ontario, who wish to draw to the attention of the House that the Canadian Forces Housing Agency provides on base housing for some of our military families and serves a valuable purpose by doing so; however, many of those homes are substandard to acceptable living conditions and suffer from annual rent increases despite their unsuitability for our military families.
Therefore, the petitioners call upon Parliament to immediately suspend any future rent increases for accommodation provided by the Canadian Forces Housing Agency until such time as the Government of Canada makes substantive improvements to the living conditions of housing provided for our military families.
Gary Schellenberger: Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of some of my constituents to draw the attention of the House to the following. Marriage defined as a lifelong union between one man and one woman is the best foundation for families and the raising of children. This definition of marriage is being changed by the courts. It is the exclusive jurisdiction of Parliament to define marriage. The petitioners pray that Parliament define marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to present a petition on the subject of autism spectrum disorder. This terrible and life destroying condition affects one Canadian child in 195, and it is because of the grave importance of this issue that hon. members from all parties have been presenting petitions on this subject over the course of the past week.
This petition draws the attention of the House to the length of waiting lists for intensive behaviour intervention therapy. This therapy can be life changing, but it only works if it is done early. In some provinces parents face waiting lists of a year or more and therefore must purchase the therapy privately or lose their children to autism.
As a concluding remark, I note that in addition to the petition I am presenting today, which went through the proper channels, I am in possession of an online petition containing several thousand additional names. This second petition is not admissible under House rules, but if there were unanimous consent, I would like to introduce this as well.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Questions on the Order PaperDominic LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, I imagine that you will be pleased to know that question No. 13 will be answered today.
Question No. 13Mr. John Williams: With regard to the testimony given by the Clerk of the Privy Council to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts on May 3, 2004 (Meeting No. 39, 37th Parliament, 3rd Session): ( a ) on how many occasions have deputy ministers approached the current Clerk of the Privy Council with concerns that a minister may have asked the deputy minister or department to carry out an illegal or improper activity; ( b ) which deputy minister(s) approached the Clerk and which department(s) was/were involved; ( c ) what were the details of the request which triggered the discussion with the Clerk; and ( d ) in each case, was the expenditure of public money involved?
Hon. Marlene Jennings (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister (Canada—U.S.), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, on May 3, 2004, the Clerk of the Privy Council informed the public accounts committee that, on about three occasions over two years, deputy ministers had come to him to say that they had strongly advised a minister that something the minister wanted should or could not be done. He also made it clear that this was not to be interpreted as meaning that ministers wanted to do anything illegal and that, indeed, in every instance, the actions taken were consistent with the law.
Moreover, as deputy of the Prime Minister and head of the public service, and to promote effective management of the public service, the Clerk of the Privy Council must be in a position to receive full and frank information about internal governmental operations. As well, ministers must be in a position to express freely their opinions and views, and to share them with their deputy ministers in confidentiality. This point was also made before the public account committee. These important principles are recognized in the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act.
Asking the Clerk of the Privy Council to disclose opinions or views that a minister may have expressed on a confidential basis, in a context such as here where all actions taken were consistent with the law, would draw him into a political role and be contrary to the convention of neutrality of the public service.
Disclosure of such information would therefore prejudice both the confidential nature of the discussions and the importance of protecting the neutrality of the public service.
Dominic LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): Is that agreed?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Agreed.
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, an act to establish the Department of Social Development and to amend and repeal certain related Acts be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Ms. Nicole Demers (Laval, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's decision to divide the Department of Human Resources Development into two distinct departments, Human Resources and Skills Development , and Social Development, ignores the realities and needs of Quebec and of the other provinces and territories.
I must say that I am really impressed by the ingenuity and creativity of this government in coming up with ways to interfere in areas that came under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. Imagine just for a moment all that energy being focussed on ensuring that each province received its fair share in order to meet its responsibilities toward its citizens.
Unfortunately, this department is just one more example of the astronomical amounts being sunk into a whole series of federal administrative duplications, rather than being redistributed to the provinces to put an end to fiscal imbalance.
I worked for years in the community sector and I have sat on many boards of organizations in Laval. In particular, I was on a committee called the Comité permanent des aînés du secteur 2, whose mission was to end isolation among seniors and help them to a better life through meetings, leisure activities, training and information. I also sat on the Conseil des médias communautaires, a community media council providing an Internet portal and newsletter for community groups in Laval. I was involved in the Centre d'aide et d'accompagnement aux plaintes, which offers support in making claims and getting results to people having problems with the health or social services systems.
I was also active with a program called 1,2,3 GO! which helps infants and their parents get a good start in life, and with the Maison des grand-parents de Laval,which gives seniors a chance to pass on their knowledge to young people, through intergenerational activities such as letter-writing, knitting courses, homework help and many other things, so that they can continue to share what they have learned and what they have become. In addition, I was a member of the Association québécoise de défense des droits des personnes retraitées et pré-retraitées, which is Quebec's leading advocate for seniors' rights.
In addition, I was active in the Carrefour d'interculture de Laval, an organization that welcomes new immigrants and refugees, helps them get established and helps them deal with the tragedies they may have experienced. I was active in the Coopérative de développement régional Montréal-Laval, which does cooperative development,and in the Forum de la population de la Régie régionale de Laval, a public forum to ensure that health and social services decisions reflect the true needs of the people of Laval. Finally, I sat on the Comité consultatif du poste de police communautaire du secteur 2, which works with all social and economic partners to provide a better quality of life to residents of the Laval-des-Rapides, Pont-Viau and Renaud areas.
Therefore, I am very familiar with the serious situation in Quebec caused by the fiscal imbalance.
It might be thought that even I, as a dedicated and committed sovereignist, was tempted by some of these new programs that are being proposed. Happily, even though I come from a poor environment, and though I may engage in poor politics, if one believes the campaign speeches by the Quebec lieutenant, unlike him, I do not engage in petty politics. When the federal government takes advantage of the fiscal imbalance it has itself created to grab jurisdictions that never belonged to it, that is petty politics.
Unfortunately, on November 1, the Quebec lieutenant made the following statement to La Presse , “We are talking about addressing the priorities identified during the last campaign but, when that is done, we will move on to other challenges which, this time, will be more within our jurisdiction”.
With statements like these, the situation is not about to be resolved. A person has to be totally ignorant of the problems facing real people and the needs of Quebeckers to strut about like that.
When I took a closer look, I realized how pernicious the implementation of these programs was. A case in point is the social development partnerships program, designed to provide grants and contributions to non-profit organizations working to improve the quality of life of persons with disabilities, children and their families, and other vulnerable or excluded populations, and to address their social development needs.
Then, there is the voluntary sector initiative, designed to enhance relations with the voluntary sector. For the duration of the initiative, both sectors would work together to facilitate access by these organizations to federal programs, technology and more.
Finally, there is the new horizons for seniors program, to support a range of community-based projects intended to enable seniors to participate in social activities, pursue an active life and contribute to society.
Such direct federal interventions with community organizations are a blatant invasion of the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces, which maintain a relationship with these organizations through the health and social services network. Their sole purpose is to create dependency on programs which are not sustainable and which makes beggars out of the organizations.
These organizations deserve better. On a daily basis, by conviction, and often calling—it is fair to talk about a calling when we see the salaries paid in the community sector—thousands of people are busy helping, supporting, informing, training and caring for thousands of others, who would be on their own otherwise.
I worked in community services for over ten years and I know a thing or two about it. I know that people worked 70, 80 or 90 hours a week and got paid for only 30 or 35 hours. They work these hours because they believe they can help people get through their problems.
The fiscal imbalance often has tragic effects, and people who work in this field can detect them. They can see the effects and understand them. They work with seniors, some of whom unfortunately have not received the guaranteed income supplement, because it was not made available to them or they were not given the full retroactive payment to which they were entitled. When you go to the homes of people like that you see that they have nothing in their fridge. They have to choose between buying medication or food. It is appalling and outrageous.
The Government of Quebec is in the best position to assess the real needs. It does not just hand out money. It intervenes through a stable, structured and long-term policy.
The Bloc Québécois cannot therefore support the creation of a department that, by definition, interferes in the jurisdictions of Quebec and the other provinces. This government keeps promising to respect the jurisdictions of Quebec, but, in fact, the opposite occurs.
This government has a reputation for interfering, and we simply do not believe its promises any more. Although I believe the minister has good intentions, I do not believe that his government has good intentions.
Despite the inclusion of the Bloc Québécois amendment to the amendment in the Speech from the Throne requiring the government to fully respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces, we must remain vigilant.
If this government would keep to its own responsibilities and honour the agreements and promises it has made with people in areas under its responsibility, I think this would go over better.
Look at assistance for veterans. I know all about this. My father is a veteran. He fought in World War II. He spent six years on the front lines. He fought in every campaign: Italy, Poland, Holland and North Africa. He was a scout, which meant he slept in the trenches.
When he came home from the front, a broken and exhausted man, he was suffering from various conditions for which the authorities would do nothing, or claimed nothing could be done. We spend 20 years fighting to get him hearing aids. We spent 20 years trying to prove that his deafness was due to having to sleep in the trenches and in close proximity to exploding shells and bombs for the whole length of the war. It was a dreadful experience.
Unfortunately, my father is no longer with us, and so has not been able to profit from this new generosity toward veterans. There are, however, others who are still suffering and are not yet covered, not yet compensated for their contribution and their courage.
Now they dare bring up the idea of a new department in charge of social affairs. I cannot get over it.
Clearly, despite the addition of the Bloc Québécois amendment to the amendment in connection with the Speech from the Throne obliging the government to respect the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces, we need to remain very much on guard. The only thing the government wants is to weaken the provinces still further, to interfere even more in areas of jurisdiction that do not belong to it, by trying to fool the public.
For 2002-03 alone, these intrusions represent $81 billion, which is 44% of federal expenditures and 55% of the government's operating expenses. This is a disgrace. The question we would be entitled to ask is this. Would this by chance be a new department created in order to give this government the high profile it used to get from the sponsorship program? Or is it viewed as a replacement for the Canadian unity fund?
I would invite all parties in this House to listen to reason and vote against this bill.
Hon. Eleni Bakopanos (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Social Development (Social Economy), Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I am not surprised at the speech made by the hon. member for Laval, who is a new member of this House, because I have been hearing the same thing for 12 years in this House. For 12 years, all the members of the Bloc Québécois have been saying the same thing on this subject, that it comes under provincial jurisdiction.
But we are well aware that in their opinion, Canada should not exist, and the departments that have anything to do with Quebec should not exist either.
There was a report by a House of Commons committee which proposed, after careful analysis, that the two departments should be split. There was a minority report, based on the same argument we keep hearing in this House, the one about provincial jurisdiction.
Nevertheless, there was a department to look after Canadian citizens from birth to death, from the beginning of their lives to the end. This department existed. Therefore, this bill had to follow up on the committee's recommendations. That is what we are doing today in the House. We are not talking about a social engineering project like the Bloc proposes.
Moreover, since this department was created, we have experienced very good collaboration with the federalist government in Quebec. Therefore, we will continue to work together on the areas in this department's portfolio, bearing in mind the people it serves. It is a form of collaboration, after all. We must work together with our provincial colleagues, with all the non-governmental organizations and with all the volunteers. That is what we are trying to do with this bill, to give legal form to something that already existed and has now been split into two parts.
I have a question for the new member, for whom I most certainly have great respect. I am familiar with her commitment to voluntary and non-governmental organizations. With regard to the programs under this department, should we not have such cooperation with the provincial government, to ensure that, especially where Quebec is doing good things, we can provide the resources? Should we not continue to collaborate? That is my question for the hon. member.
Nicole Demers: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question. I have great admiration for her also. I am aware of her social involvement.
We are indeed totally in favour of the federal government giving the money to Quebec, so that we can look after these programs ourselves. What we have a problem with is the federal government taking upon itself to run these programs. Let the government give us the money and correct the fiscal imbalance and, believe me, these programs will be well managed by Quebec. As my hon. colleague said, Quebec has very good expertise, and long experience with community programs for seniors, children and the sick.
Mr. André Bellavance (Richmond—Arthabaska, BQ): Mr. Speaker, I do have a question for my hon. colleague, who made an excellent speech. The parliamentary secretary claims that this government has an excellent relationship and fruitful discussions with the Government of Quebec. Even if the current government in Quebec is a federalist one, I have news for her.
Quebec's employment, social solidarity and family minister, Claude Béchard, who is a cabinet member in the federalist government in Quebec, had a motion put before the National Assembly to make sure he had the support of all the members in negotiating with the federal government. This motion was introduced on November 3, 2004, that is to say, very recently. I will read what it says, if I may. It is very short:

That, in the negotiations with the federal government on the implementation of a new Canada-wide child care program, the National Assembly support the Government of Quebec in its efforts to obtain funding with no strings attached and in the respect of Quebec's constitutional jurisdictions.

Try as they may to have us believe that there is agreement, that is not true when it comes to respect for jurisdictions. That is what I would like to ask of my hon. colleague who made an excellent speech on this bill which is, once again, another example of encroachment.
I would like my hon. colleague to elaborate on all these encroachments by the federal government in the case of the provinces, and Quebec in particular, which are the source of so many problems.
Nicole Demers: Mr. Speaker, just look at the problem with child care. It is indeed a problem that concerns us all. There are also problems with the community agencies, as I was saying earlier, and with parental leave.
The list is so long that I could spend another 10 minutes explaining all the problems that have not been resolved because of the fiscal imbalance. There is a problem with employment insurance and everything that comes under Quebec jurisdiction, such as persons with disabilities, people with specific problems, education. The list goes on.
I thank my hon. colleague very much for his question. I will end there.
Eleni Bakopanos: Mr. Speaker, I cannot let the words of the hon. member go unanswered. Of course, the hon. member tells us what the Quebec minister said but I can assure him that the minister was there at the table with us. He was there to negotiate. That is what was said, they are prepared to sit down with us to negotiate. At the moment, the final agreement is not signed.
No one on this side has said that Quebec's child care program is not the best in the country. On the contrary, we have said it is the best. I am from Quebec. My riding is in Quebec. I know exactly what services are available.
There are a few problems, however, as far as training is concerned. That is what I hear from people in connection with day care and the situation needs to be remedied. I think that the $5 billion we are prepared to invest and to share with the provinces will enable us to create a program, or continue the one in place, where there is one. The minister has said that thought will be given to this in January when we again sit down with the representatives of the provinces. Mr. Béchard is part of the negotiating group.
That is the difference between the way things were in the days of the Parti Québécois government, and now that there is a Liberal government in Quebec. They are prepared to sit down, to negotiate, to work together.
So I ask again: should we not have a negotiating table, precisely so that we can negotiate in areas where there is shared jurisdiction between the federal and the provincial governments and where we can work together? We are prepared to work together.
Nicole Demers: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is surely aware that a committee has already been struck to deal with the fiscal imbalance. Therefore, I am convinced that all the problems caused by the federal government's infringements will be solved.
Mario Silva: Mr. Speaker, I rise to add my voice in support of this bill to formally create the new Department of Social Development, because I believe it will do much to improve the lives of Canadian seniors.
As we all know, life expectancy in Canada has risen substantially over the past century. As a result, the number of people 65 and older is expected to double, from 4.6 million last year to 9.2 million by 2041.
One obvious consequence will be felt when the baby-boomer generation hits retirement age. Instead of contributing to pension funds, they will be drawing on them. Already nearly five million Canadians receive benefits through the Canadian pension plan and old age security programs and that number has nowhere to go but up.
Is this cause for alarm? No, it is not. It simply requires us to recognize the reality and to prepare for it.
What is more, we ought to focus on the wonderful contributions that seniors make to our families, our communities and our society. We should be figuring out ways to encourage and promote their active engagement.
That is one of the key purposes of this new department of Social Development Canada: to serve as a focal point for initiatives for seniors, initiatives including income support programs to prevent seniors from living in poverty, and other programs to involve and engage them in their communities.
Seniors need enough money to live on, to be sure, but they need something else as well. They have to feel that their lives are full and worthwhile.
Social Development Canada, working with its many partners in the provinces and territories, municipalities, the private sector, the voluntary sector and learning institutions, is taking important steps to achieve both these ends.
The Government of Canada currently spends more than $63 billion a year on programs and services for seniors. This includes almost $21 billion for universal old age security pensions, nearly $16 billion for Canada's pension plan for retired workers, $5.8 billion for the guaranteed income supplement for low income seniors, and more than $4 billion for other survivor and death benefits as well as health care.
It is reassuring to know that our public pension system is there for our most vulnerable citizens. Indeed, public pensions have helped reduce the proportion of seniors living below the poverty line from 20.8% in 1980 to 7.3% in 2000. As OECD statistics confirm, Canada is a world leader in alleviating poverty among seniors.
Social Development Canada will continue to administer these programs with the same level of professionalism and courtesy that Canadian seniors have come to expect.
A secure source of income is critically important for all our seniors, but with men now spending more than 17% of their lives in retirement and women close to 28%, we need to take the broadest view possible. We need to think about quality of life.
We know that seniors can easily get cut off from the rest of society. This is not uncommon after somebody loses a spouse, especially when their children and grandchildren live far away, yet social engagement is essential because it translates into greater physical, mental and emotional well-being.
Fortunately, many seniors do keep very busy. A few, about 6%, remain in the paid workforce after they reach 65. Nearly one in five give back to their communities through volunteer activities. Many more provide transportation and child care and run errands for friends and families.
We need to support such engagement and expand on it to give as many Canadian seniors as possible a chance to remain active participants in our society.
That is why Social Development Canada has unveiled the new horizons for seniors program. The new horizons program will support community based projects to encourage seniors to participate in social activities, pursue an active life and contribute to their communities.
Seniors' organizations, volunteer groups, community based coalitions, municipal governments and aboriginal groups will be able to propose a variety of projects eligible for funding under the program budget of $8 million this year and $10 million in the year ahead.
Initiated and led by seniors, each project will harness the skills, experience and wisdom of older Canadians in activities that will benefit their local communities. That will be good for seniors and good for everybody around them.
It is true that neighbours and families have vital roles to play in keeping older Canadians connected to their communities, but this does not mean that governments cannot help as well. Social Development Canada's role will be to provide the resources to turn good ideas into reality. It will also serve as a clearinghouse for those good ideas so that one community can learn from another.
I think we can all agree that there are real and tangible benefits for a society that looks after its older members. The well-being of seniors is a priority for the Government of Canada. That is why the Prime Minister created a new cabinet position and appointed the hon. member for Trinity--Spadina as Minister of State for Families and Caregivers.
Seniors with strong connections to their families and communities are well positioned to share the wisdom of their experience with others, whether informally or more formally through voluntary activities or paid work. Healthy and socially connected seniors are more likely to live independent lives, an outcome that the Government of Canada is working to support.
Social Development Canada will coordinate policy work at the federal level and in cooperation with the provinces to ensure that seniors' programming is aligned to achieve the best results for current and future seniors.
As a society we are enriched by the wisdom and knowledge of our older citizens. The Speech from the Throne put it best: “Canada's seniors have earned the right to be treated with dignity”.
Support for our country's aging population is an important priority of the Government of Canada. Under the leadership of Social Development Canada, we will have the mechanisms to bring all the partners together, to focus on the challenges and opportunities of an aging society, and to ensure we have the programs and services that will allow all Canadians to live the final years of their lives with comfort and dignity.
Seniors are vital members of our communities. They have earned the right to be treated well by the society to which they have contributed so much.
By passing this legislation to create Social Development Canada, we will create a means for all Canadians to express their respect and appreciation.
I would like to state, as I asked the hon. minister today in the House, what the government's priority for seniors is going to be. He clearly outlined the government's priority. It is one that respects our seniors, our voluntary sector and people who are afflicted with handicaps.
In my riding of Davenport and across this country, seniors play a vital role in community services. Seniors are the backbone of the volunteer sector. They are the ones who contribute most to our society. Because of that, because of their contributions to this country, we strive to make their lives better, to have them live in dignity.
Through the various announcements the government has made and the creation of the new ministry and department, this is an issue where the government has a focus on seniors, on people with disabilities and of course on people who are volunteering and giving so much to our communities.
I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill.
André Bellavance: Mr. Speaker, I have listened very carefully to what the hon. member had to say. Of course this new department would have a great deal to offer many people, seniors in particular.
That is not where the problem lies. The problem lies mainly with the encroachment into areas of provincial jurisdiction, and the jurisdiction of Quebec in particular. We have all understood it: what we want is for the federal government to respect its jurisdictions as set out in the 1867 Constitution.
My hon. colleague has just been referring to the guaranteed income supplement. We know that this is a battle that the Bloc Québécois has been waging tirelessly for some time. The hon. member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain can testify to that, as he has put a great deal of effort into it. In Quebec, 68,000 seniors have been deprived of the GIS, and in all of Canada , 270,000.
I would like to ask the hon. member why his government, despite all its fine words and expressions of good intentions, will not agree to make the GIS fully retroactive. That way, it would be able to go back. not 11 months, but 11 years. As a result, all the people who have been deprived of the GIS since 1993 could now be getting it. It must be made retroactive, and retroactive back to 1993. I would like the hon. member to explain to me why they are passing off the creation of this department as a cure-all, when there are still people in need, still people whom this government has deprived of the guaranteed income supplement and full retroactivity of that supplement
Mario Silva: Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that this is an important issue for all members, not just Bloc Québécois members. I believe that all members here are very concerned about seniors. I can unequivocally state that, in our country, this government spends in excess of $63 billion annually on services programs for the elderly.
It is also important to mention that public pensions have helped reduce the proportion of seniors living below the poverty level. Indeed, the percentage went from 20.8% in 1940, down to 7.3% in 2000.
We continue to try to reach more and more people. I am proud that our government made it a priority to help vulnerable people in our society, including seniors.
Randy Kamp: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's speech was very well done and clearly presented. I have a question and perhaps a comment.
I understand from the throne speech that the government is telling us that seniors are now a priority. It has never really seemed like that and certainly all the seniors I speak to in my riding have a hard time seeing that.
Today I understand that there are intentions to raise the guaranteed income supplement. That is a good thing, I think, but my question is, what are the criteria? How does the government decide, both for the amount of the old age pension itself and then for the supplement? How does the government pick this number?
Seniors have been asking me that over the years. I have never known for sure just what the government bases this on. Is there is some sort of basket of goods that they are supposed to be able to buy for this? Most seniors still seem pretty poor to me.
The second question relates to seniors and their benefits and also to people on disability. This might be outside the realm here, but what really bothers me is these people who live right on the edge of being able to survive, have a hard time putting money aside for income tax, and then at the end of the year owe income tax. It might be only $200 or $400, but when people have no disposable income, how are they supposed to pay this?
Mario Silva: Mr. Speaker, indeed, the issue of seniors is very important for the government and, as was outlined in the Speech from the Throne, the government is increasing the guaranteed income supplement.
In my riding of Davenport, seniors play an incredible role in community development. It is something that I have kept a very close watch on and have been quite involved with for a number of years. I understand the issues of seniors quite well. I understand the importance of seniors living out their lives with dignity and respect.
As I alluded to, the government in fact is reaching out to seniors and is now working to implement some of the details in relation to the increase of the guaranteed income supplement. Certainly the seniors in this country are a priority for the government.
Pat Martin: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity, on behalf of the New Democratic Party, to speak to Bill C-22, regarding the new social development bureaucracy and the new ministry of social development. I note with interest that our critic for this area recommends that we support the bill at this stage because we support the idea of restructuring HRDC into two separate entities.
We were always critical that HRDC was too much. It was a mega portfolio, a massive undertaking, that was clearly too big for any one minister to manage. The issues and subject matter being dealt with were overwhelmingly difficult to manage, especially when we looked at the type of issues with which it had to deal.
I note the new Minister of Social Development deals with issues such as the Canada pension plan, the old age security program and the guaranteed income supplement. I hope, in a broader context, the new Minister of Social Development would not simply administer programs, but would help guide the government in a new national objective, a new set of priorities, regarding social development so we could think outside the box and dare to dream of elevating the standards of living conditions for all Canadians in measurable ways and then put in place a yardstick to measure that progress.
I take no pleasure in pointing out that the campaign 2000 was recently on Parliament Hill reminding us that over one million Canadian children live in poverty, in what one could argue is the wealthiest and most successful democracy in the free world.
Clearly, our priorities have been skewed or our interests have been diverted and we have not paid enough attention to the area of social development. We should be measuring the progress of the country not by the monuments and structures in our cities and not by our GDP, but by the quality of life of Canadians. Maybe the Minister of Social Development could be seized with that issue as a national priority.
My riding of Winnipeg Centre is the third poorest riding in Canada. Some people do not realize that, and I take no pleasure in pointing that out either. Of all the families in my riding, 47% of them live below the poverty line and 52% of all the children. I raise this with a matter of great urgency, especially in this era of cutbacks. The cutbacks have come from social programs. Granted we have paid off the deficit, but we have left an enormous social deficit in its wake. I can testify to that on a day to day basis. I deal with this reality every day.
We went through an era of the 1990s, which was a record profit era for Bay Street, Wall Street, the banks and corporations and record era of cutbacks in social spending. The predictable consequences are record numbers of poor kids in my riding and all the predictable outfall of that. Somehow we have been derailed.
I am a socialist, granted, so maybe I am jaded and biased in this regard. I have a theory that the big money has controlled things in Ottawa for so long that all of our bills, laws and legislation are geared to look after the interests of big money, and everyone else has been forgotten. I can point to the social conditions in my riding as evidence of that.
I do not think it is by neglect or innocent oversight that we have allowed these circumstances to overwhelm certain regions. I point to the guaranteed income supplement as an example. My colleague from the Bloc Québécois pointed this out, quite rightly. I do not care how busy the Minister of HRDC has been in recent years. What the Liberals did in the administration of the guaranteed income supplement was nothing short of cruel. They knew full well that hundreds of thousands of Canadian seniors were eligible for the supplement, but they did not get it.
They knew this because of the income tax records of those Canadians. They knew full well that these Canadians, by virtue of the amount of money they earned from other sources, were eligible for this payment, but they took no steps to advise them of that. We had seniors living in abject poverty when they could have been receiving another $500 a month. There is a natural justice issue here. These people had a right to know. Then when we called attention to this, they used the guise of the Privacy Act. They said that it would be a violation of a senior citizen's privacy, if Revenue Canada told HRDC that the person was eligible for this benefit
I do not think seniors would complain if somebody advised them that they were eligible for another $300 to $500 a month when their income has to be lower than $12,000 a year to be eligible. These are poorest of the poor, yet the government hid behind the guise of the Privacy Act so it did not have to give these seniors the benefits they were due. That did not happen because the Minister of HRDC was too busy and seized with other issues. That happened as a conscious choice of the government trying to pay down the deficit on the backs of the most vulnerable people in society. It is reprehensible, and I condemn the government in the strongest possible terms for that.
An added irony to this is the Privacy Act does not seem to apply if a person who is collecting EI benefit crosses the border for a day. Let us say from my home town of Winnipeg, a person on EI crosses the border to buy some jeans in Fargo, North Dakota and comes back through the border. The border customs agent turns him or her in to employment insurance officers saying that the individual is on EI and is supposed to look for work all day, every day, not driving across the border to shop.
Somehow it is not a violation of people's privacy to rat them out because they took an afternoon drive, but it is an invasion of privacy to advise senior citizens that they are eligible for a $500 a month guaranteed income supplement premium. What kind of pretzel logic is that? That is what I mean when I said that some of these policies bordered on cruelty. They certainly were not designed in the best interests of Canadians. I do not know in whose interests they were designed, but it was not to benefit us to the maximum.
I would point out another thing. The government has paid down the deficit on the EI surplus. There is no secret there. The Auditor General reminds us of it all the time. We went through riding by riding across country. When I say “we”, we hired professional pollsters to do this. They analyzed the impact, riding for riding. In my riding of Winnipeg Centre, the third poorest riding in the country, the cutbacks to EI alone cost $20.8 million a year. For people who were already at the margin, if not poor, this pushed a lot of people from the edge of being working poor to unemployed to abject poverty.
Imagine what we would do if we could attract an industry into our ridings that had a $20.8 million payroll. We would pave the streets with gold to attract businesses like that to our ridings. Those guys in the government cut that payroll out of my riding with one stroke of the pen, when they changed the EI provisions to where nobody qualified any more. No wonder there is a surplus in EI. Nobody qualifies any more. We have to pay in, but we cannot pull out. The government paid down the debt on the back of that surplus.
The other thing on which the government paid down the debt was the $30 billion cut from the Canada health and social transfers. Where did it get the remaining $30 billion? At the time I did this math, there was a $30 billion surplus in the EI fund and the government announced a $100 billion tax cut. A further $30 billion came from the public sector pension plan. People forget there was a huge surplus in that pension plan. It was built up largely because the government let go or fired a third of the Canada public service during those cutback years.
Rather than negotiate some sharing mechanism with the beneficiaries of the plan or simply admit that this was the employees' money, part of their wages and therefore their benefits should go up, the government took it all. The last act of Marcel Masse, when he was president of the Treasury Board, was to force, through closure, a bill through the House which gave the government the right to grab all $30 billion out of the public service pension plan surplus, call it the property of the Government of Canada and put it into the general revenue.
It is no secret that it did not take any good money management skills to pay down the debt and deficit. The government took it out of EI from unemployed workers, the most vulnerable people in the economic force. It took it out of guaranteed income supplement payments to low income seniors. It took it out of the public service employees pension plan.
That is the paucity of social development standards that we see in the previous government.
When I rose today to say I support Bill C-22, I support having a minister perhaps responsible for social development. However, I can serve notice right now that we will be holding the government to a standard. We will have our own yardstick by which we will measure progress and that measurement will be this. Will there be less poor kids in my riding? Will anything we do in the House ever elevate the standards of poverty and living conditions of the people in my riding?
The last thing I would point out is the face of poverty in my riding is by and large native. I can say without any hesitation and without any fear of contradiction, the overwhelming majority of the people living in poverty, and true abject poverty by anyone's definition, are off reserve aboriginal people who flock to the city in the hope of finding some measure of opportunity. In many cases they go from the days drudgery in their reserve to the inner city of Winnipeg. Desperation is what they find when they arrive. There is no social services network really left. There is a mere shadow of what it used to be when we used to talk about the just society. We used to say that the number one priority of Parliament and of government was to elevate the standards of living conditions of its people. That seems to have been lost in the shuffle.
Therefore, we had a decade of record profits in businesses and corporations and a decade of cutting, hacking and slashing. What happened to the post-war labour compact? Perhaps our new Minister of Social Development would like to talk about that when the department gets up and running.
In the post-war years, there was a deal, a tacit agreement with labour that when productivity went up and when profits went up, workers' wages were supposed to go up, thereby creating a burgeoning middle class, thereby having a healthy economy. That was thrown by the wayside. Somehow the Liberals decided they did not need to live up to their end of the bargain anymore. Now record profits do not justify any sharing with employees. In fact, it justifies in their mind a screwing down of standards and labour laws and a reduction in the rate of unionization, the only effective tool for elevating the living conditions of most working people, with free collective bargaining.
I am anxious to speak to our new Minister of Social Development when the new bureaucracy is fully engaged and up and running. These are glaring shortcomings and oversights that we take note of on this side of the House.
I have already said that in my riding, 47% of all the families live below the poverty line. Overwhelmingly the face of poverty is native. The National Association of Friendship Centres is struggling to try to cope with servicing the needs of aboriginal people in the communities in Quebec and in other provinces in Canada.
We have been visited by the National Association of Friendship Centres. It has said that it exists as a national chain of institutions. It is already up and running. It is a structure that could deliver some of these services to non-status, off reserve and Métis people who are floundering in the inner cities, needing assistance to get into the mainstream economy, whether it is life skills training of access to adequate housing, et cetera. Many of these services could be delivered through the Association of Friendship Centres were there the political will to do so.
Rather than set up any new bureaucracy and try to invent new institutions to deliver services to low income aboriginal people in the inner city of all of our major cities, I urge the new minister to forge a relationship with the National Association of Friendship Centres. It might form some kind of a service delivery contract, single window operation to reach out to people.
In closing, we expect the new Department of Social Development and the new Minister of Social Development to set targets for social indications of progress in the same way that the government set targets to eliminate the deficit and tackle the debt. We want to see new targets and a new yardstick to measure progress which results in less kids living in poverty and a better standard of living in our inner cities. That is something that we could be proud of as members of Parliament if we use that as our indication of progress as Canadians.
Eleni Bakopanos: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member, who is the critic for the New Democratic Party, for his party's support of the bill.
I was listening very carefully to the hon. member's speech and to some of his comments on some of the issues that we will be tackling, together I hope, both on the committee and within the lifespan of this Parliament. He raised some very important issues with which we will struggle and, as a new ministry, we will learn. As I have always said, we always must learn from the past.
A question that came up earlier concerned the seniors' supplement. I think the minute the government knew there was a problem it put measures in place to assure that ever senior who was entitled to the supplement received the supplement.
Canadians who are listening to the debate should know that 1.5 million seniors receive over $5 billion in guaranteed income supplement benefits and that since 2002, 285,000 letters were mailed out by the department to seniors who had not applied for the supplement and who might be eligible. Letters and personalized application forms using our tax system were used and over 172,000 more people subscribed.
It is the responsibility of every one of us in the chamber to make sure that even if there is one senior who is entitled to the guaranteed income supplement that the senior will have access to it. I put out a householder encouraging them to do so. If any member in the House knows of any senior who is not receiving the supplement and should be, I encourage them to please let the department and the minister know.
I also want to talk about eliminating poverty because it has been an issue in the House for far too long. Even if one child lives in poverty, we cannot be proud of that. We must make sure that we eradicate the social deficit, as the hon. member said, and as effectively as we eliminated the economic deficit in the country.
After the report of campaign 2000, certain measures were taken to decrease child poverty and poverty in general in the country. The opposition members referred to the $5 billion that is on the table for the national child care program. They said that it was a very good initiative and that we should be putting money on the table for a national child care and early learning system.
We did introduce the Canada child tax benefit which has provided $7.7 billion in income support to low and middle income families.
The member talked a lot about the poverty issue. Besides the fact that we have put measures in place and that campaign 2000 said that these measures were in the right direction, would the member say that the establishment of this new ministry is a step in the right direction in terms of assuring that programs and services will be--
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Eleni Bakopanos: Mr. Speaker, it is not Bloc Québécois members who preside over this assembly, it is the Chair. I believe it is up to you to decide.
[Intervention]
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Eleni Bakopanos: Is there a limit? Is it you, as members of Parliament, who decide? Unfortunately for you, that is not the case.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): The hon. parliamentary secretary is well aware that she must address the House through the Chair.
The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.
Pat Martin: Mr. Speaker, I and I think members of my caucus are optimistic that having a ministry of social development and a minister assigned specifically to social development may result in more attention to the issue of social development. I am willing to concede that but I do have to comment on some of the parliamentary secretary's remarks.
I do not believe we have done enough to make sure that everyone who is eligible for the guaranteed income supplement is getting it. It really is not up to members of Parliament to knock on every door and ask seniors whether they may be eligible for this. The government is the one that knows who they are, how much they make and whether they are eligible. It is through their income tax returns that the government can see quite plainly if a person is making less than the $12,000 a year, or whatever the cutoff is, if they are eligible and how much they are eligible for.
I believe the onus is on government to make sure it gets this necessary income supplement to everyone who is eligible for it.
Andrew Scheer: Mr. Speaker, I have a quick question for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.
He spoke a lot about the damage done to his riding when social development programs are not applied equally. However I think the tone of his party in particular is very discouraging. He referred to it as an industry in his riding.
Would the member not agree that the best way to address poverty line issues and child poverty would be to create jobs in the areas that need them, and that instead of having an industry of public programs and social assistance, to pursue economic policies that would actually result in the creation of new jobs?
In my riding in Saskatchewan, which, unfortunately, is under a regime of socialism and communism, the jobs are not there because the policies of the NDP, which we have seen federally and provincially, discourage the creation of jobs and drive business out of those areas and then we see a further cycle of dependence on public programs and social assistance.
Pat Martin: What an idiot. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. What I meant to say is that the program I was making reference to is the EI program. Changes to the EI program took $20.8 million per year out of my riding, which would be comparable to a plant closure losing $20.8 million in payroll.
Obviously our first choice is to have opportunities for work for everyone. I can point to one thing that would point us in that direction. On the desk of the Minister of Finance right now is a duty remission order that he could sign that would extend the duty remission for garment manufacturers for a further seven years. I have 43 garment manufacturers in my riding and many of them do employ immigrants and aboriginal people who come into my riding looking for work, but they will topple like dominoes if the Minister of Finance does not sign the duty remission order because the garment industry needs that support while it transitions to the stresses of the new global marketplace.
I agree with him that jobs are the number one priority and that the best social program in the world is a job, but the Minister of Finance could help us in that regard in my area by signing that duty remission order ASAP.
Nicole Demers: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Winnipeg Centre for his speech. It was very interesting. I had the opportunity to visit his riding not long ago, during the symposium on child care. I found that, even though Winnipeg may be poor, it is a city where people are very welcoming and generous.
My riding is also very poor. There are people who, for the most part, are on welfare because they are not entitled to employment insurance benefits. We certainly wonder why the government wants to create a new department when it is not even able to meet the needs and demands of the people who are entitled to EI benefits because they have been paying premiums for years. This is insurance, not a program that the government is paying for. It is the people who are paying for this.
I wonder how my colleague can think that his province is unable to provide social and community services to its citizens, when the government that would want to do so, the federal government, is unable to manage its own programs or to solve problems such as mad cow disease, the softwood lumber dispute and scabs. These are very important issues that fall under its jurisdiction. How can the member believe that this government would be better than his own provincial government at solving the problems in his province?
Pat Martin: Mr. Speaker, we will fiercely fight to protect our jurisdiction in Manitoba when it comes to the delivery of social programs, but we will just as fiercely demand that this new ministry of social development does something about the inadequacy of the transfer payments to the provinces so that they can meet the genuine need within inner city ridings like ours.
The Canada health and social transfer has been an abject failure in terms of block funding for post-secondary education, health care and social services. Perhaps through this new Minister of Social Development we will be able to argue that basic needs in our communities are not being met by their current structure, their current policy and their current miserly treatment in the transfer of money to the provinces so that we can deliver those programs in our own jurisdictions.
Jean-Claude D'Amours: Mr. Speaker, last December, the Government of Canada established the Department of Social Development to provide a centre of expertise for social policies and programs, thereby enabling Canada to maintain and strengthen its reputation as a nation that cares about the well-being of its population.
In the past 10 months, Social Development Canada has taken bold steps in support of its mandate. Now, in introducing a bill to provide a legal basis for the department, we are building on the work accomplished and laying the foundation for a more aggressive approach to social issues at the federal level.
With its 161,000 non-profit organizations, the Canadian volunteer sector represents both a social and economic force in our country. Once again, I want to stress that, when we say that there are 161,000 non-profit organizations across the country, we have to pay attention to this great force.
The basic purpose of volunteer work and non-profit organizations is to ensure that we can help not only our region, our city or our province progress further, but the whole country. It is therefore extremely important to work with and support these organizations which, in practice, make a useful contribution, very often, in more specific ways than the government or other institutions could.
Non-profit organizations, including charities, provide a full range of services to meet human needs: child care, elder care and youth recreation.
Many organizations focus their efforts on the members of groups which are often marginalized, such as persons with disabilities, aboriginal people and new immigrants. They provide services such as education and training, housing and shelter, and places of worship. In so doing, they improve the quality of life of millions of Canadians.
While providing essential services, non-profit organizations also give Canadians an opportunity to reach out to their fellow citizens. Newcomers to Canada, for instance, get acquainted with their adoptive country through volunteer work, not to mention that this is an opportunity for all these newcomers to gain valuable and fulfilling work experience.
All in all, more than six million Canadians give their time to non-profit or community organizations. This is a donation of more than deux billion hours of work every year. I want to say that despite my full schedule, both in the past and the present, I have taken part in voluntary activities many times. I thought it was very important, not for myself, but like those millions of other Canadians, in order to help and encourage the rest of the population. In fact, when we belong to an organization that provides assistance to the public, we are certainly not doing it for our own personal good.
The assistance provided to these organizations is often dismissed as marginal. Nevertheless, we must never forget that without the concern of the people who keep voluntary organizations and volunteerism going, it would be even more difficult to ensure that everyone in our country is very well taken care of.
Two billion hours of work is a great deal. The Canadian people give many hours of their time so that everyone in Canada can benefit. Two billion hours of work per year is quite a contribution for the entire population of Canada and for its well-being.
Whether they are delivering meals to seniors in their homes, coaching in minor league sports or offering respite care for families in need, our volunteers are doing essential work that reflects well on Canada's dynamic communities.
When we talk about delivering meals, I would just like to point out that in my home region the Canadian Red Cross offers this service. But the service does not appear simply by saying, “We will do it”. It can only be provided by hundreds of volunteers all over Canada who donate their time and energy to help those who need it most.
Our volunteers also contribute to community life outside Canada's borders. They give their time to organizations that create awareness of the need for pollution controls, that establish bridges of hope and understanding between cultures, and that increase the ability of developing countries to help themselves.
These actions show compassion and well-understood personal interest. Once again, I have been aware for a number of years of the importance of working with these organizations and with the people who are attracted to them. It makes it possible for us, in our communities, to ensure that we can help others with needs greater than ours, and contributes to social progress in this country.
At the end of the day, what is given comes back. In other words, as sustainable development takes root in these countries, the entire Canadian population will benefit from the emergence of a safer world that is more stable and more prosperous.
The not for profit and community organizations in Canada are important allies in creating solid and dynamic communities. Not only do they fill a real and growing need, but they speak on behalf of the most vulnerable in Canadian society. Since they are close to ordinary people, they give the government valuable information that can help improve social policy.
When I say they give the government valuable information, I believe that it is important, as parliamentarians, to take some time to talk to these people and get involved in these organizations in order to have a better understanding. That is not to say we do not understand. Nonetheless, we have to make sure we have a better understanding of the needs and the benefits of the not-for-profit organizations that work in the volunteer and community sector. This will facilitate the establishment of a link to provide information to the government so that we can move closer toward really good social policies, as we are doing today.
The volunteer and community sector is at the heart of what is most often called the social economy. It includes all the not-for-profit companies and activities utilizing people and companies to benefit communities across the country.
In Canada, some 10,000 social enterprises and organizations employ roughly 100,000 people and produce $20 billion in annual revenues. This is extremely significant in terms of revenues, but even more significant in terms of the number of people who have the opportunity to work at these social enterprises. Some 10,000 people working at 100,000 companies is significant, and it is extremely important to recognize and promote these companies.
The government is determined to foster the social economy. In fact, it has already started to reach its budget commitments of 2004 in this regard. The funding has been allocated to three priority areas. First, there is $100 million over five years in support of financial initiatives that will increase lending to social economy enterprises. As I mentioned, we can see that this contribution is important to help these social economy enterprises move forward and prosper in the country.The funding in the second initiative includes $17 million over two years for a pilot project for strategic planning and capacity building of community economic development organizations. Finally, in the third initiative, $15 million over five years will go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in support of community based research on the social economy.
It is extremely important to recognize these social economy enterprises and the importance of social economy in this country. It is important to recognize them because, often, they do not get the attention, but people need a little help that is often more moral than financial.
This investment in the social economy will total $132 million. However, funding is not enough. The government is committed to helping foster the environment that supports social economy enterprises. To this end, as the Speech from the Throne said, the government introduced a new Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, an initiative of Industry Canada.
The new legislation will modernize the regulatory framework, increase public confidence and streamline rules for charities. It will help create the necessary conditions so that social economy enterprises can prosper. In principle, everyone will benefit, since these enterprises put their surpluses back into the community.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.
Resuming debate, the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche will have nine minutes.

Private Members' Business
Excise Tax ActMr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, CPC): 
moved that Bill C-259, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act (elimination of excise tax on jewellery), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-259 is an act to eliminate the excise tax on jewellery. I think it is instructive to read the brief preamble and the actual legislative change in the bill, but before doing so I would like to say that I have had the bill in the hopper for a number of years. It is finally coming before the House largely as a result of the fact that we have changed the the way we draw bills. I was fortunate enough to win the lottery from the standpoint that my bill was picked sixth in this Parliament for private members' business. I feel quite blessed in that regard.
Bill C-259 is now a timely bill. When I first put it forward, we were dealing with a circumstance where this change had been promoted by the jewellery industry for decades, if not generations.
Now what has really changed is that we have everyone involved, right from the mining industry through to the retailer who has anything to do with diamonds and/or jewellery of all kinds, including costume jewellery. They are all now involved in this. Any item deemed to be jewellery that is sold at retail for more than $3 is subject to this tax.
Since I first introduced the bill in the House two Parliaments ago, Canada has become a diamond powerhouse, so the urgency of removing this anachronism of a tax is greater than it has ever been.
The preamble of the bill states:

Whereas manufacturers currently pay an excise tax of ten per cent on the sale price of jewellery manufactured in Canada and importers currently pay an excise tax of ten per cent on the duty-paid value of imported jewellery;
Whereas this tax was introduced in 1918 in respect of several types of goods considered to be luxury goods but today is the only luxury tax in Canada;
Whereas Canada is the only industrialized nation and the only diamond-producing nation that continues to have a luxury tax on jewellery;
And Whereas, as a result of this tax, diamonds mined in Canada cost more in Canada than anywhere else in the world;
Now, Therefore, Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

Paragraph 5(c) of Schedule I to the Excise Tax Act is repealed.


That is pretty simple. The preamble actually says a lot.
Here is what Canada is currently doing. If we have an item manufactured outside of Canada and imported into Canada and it is identical to an item manufactured in Canada, we tax the made in Canada item and do not tax the item coming from outside. This is obviously killing jobs. The excise tax on jewellery is a 10% levy paid by manufacturers on the sale price of items manufactured in Canada and by importers on the duty paid value of imports.
The House of Commons finance committee reported in 1996 that the tax was an anachronism and concluded that it should be abolished. It said the same thing in 2004. The revenue collected from the tax in 2003 was $87 million.
As a result of the growth in the diamond industry, it is now producing government revenues at current rates of about $500 million a year. Canada is currently the third largest manufacturer of diamonds in the world. By the year 2012, Canada is going to be the number one producer in the world. Government revenues from this burgeoning industry are far more than the much smaller revenues that are coming in as a consequence of this unfair and discriminatory tax.
The average Canadian household spends about $170 per year on taxable jewellery, so the average Canadian is affected by this tax.
The threshold for defining taxable jewellery is items that cost more than $3. Therefore, on every jewellery imitation at a Kmart or a Zellers or a Wal-Mart, the tax applies in Canada, but of course that tax does not apply in those same stores in the U.S. We are penalizing ourselves and driving business across the border, where even expensive jewellery can avoid the taxation because people bring it back under the $750 tax exemption for returning residents.
Steven Parker appeared before the finance committee. He is a small business jewellery manufacturer based in Vancouver, whose company employs about 20 full time people making wedding rings, family rings, earrings and necklaces. He had these observations about the tax. He is at a tax disadvantage compared to imported products because the 10% tax applies to all his costs, including marketing, distribution, manufacturing and payroll costs. He can import and have a lower cost base that he applies the 10% tax to; it would be based on landed value only.
Steven Parker and others would manufacture more jewellery in Canada. Two large Canadian jewellery manufacturers relocated outside the country since the 1998 investigation by the finance committee simply because they got tired of waiting for the government to remove this excise tax. They concluded it was not going to happen. The companies were tired of being undercut by manufacturers outside of Canada, so they relocated. This tax is demonstrably killing jobs.
About one-half of the jewellery sold by value in Canada contains diamonds. Saskatchewan will soon be joining the Northwest Territories as a world class diamond producer. Any of the premiers who are involved in jurisdictions where diamond production is either present or about to be are calling for the removal of this tax. It is pre-empting local jewellery manufacture. It is pre-empting tourists buying jewellery made in Canada because they know they can get it cheaper elsewhere.
The Mining Association of Canada said this in May of this year:

In less than a decade, Canada has emerged as a diamond powerhouse...By providing the right mix of fiscal and regulatory policies, governments have the opportunity to maximize the contribution of Canada's diamond industry to the benefit of all Canadians.

One of the key recommendations is “eliminating the federal excise tax on jewellery”. There is virtual unanimity on this subject.
Finally, the application of this tax is an art, not a science. It is applied unevenly. This is very threatening to businesses that are looking for predictability on their taxation.
The finance committee this year heard from Mo Charania of Ottawa, a third generation jeweller with five stores. In 1999 he had an excise audit covering the previous three years. He was assessed over $800,000 in excise tax and was prepared to wrap up his business because that was a bill he could not pay.
Upon investigation of discrepancies and other ways to interpret the tax, especially in terms of how a manufacturer is defined, in his case, because of these discrepancies and differences they were able to reduce his tax bill to $340,000, which meant having to sell only a couple of the five stores in order to pay the bill. I say “only” rather satirically.
Upon further investigation, it became apparent that other companies were not being assessed by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency because of an administrative policy created outside of the legislation which allows the excise to be paid at a discounted value for multiple items of the same article produced for retail. By application of this formula, it was not an $800,000 bill, nor was it a $340,000 bill. In fact, Mr. Charania would receive a credit.
This tax is incredibly complicated and very subjective in its application. On the part of the business owner, it often requires manual tracking rather than computerized tracking because of these characteristics. Also, it is subject to different opinions of and rulings by different auditors and people within CCRA. That is why CCRA has created a guide on how to apply it that is outside of the legislation. Only some of the businesses to whom this tax is being applied are even aware this guide exists. Obviously not all of the auditors, even with that interpretive document, operate the same way.
It is fairly easy to summarize many of the reasons why we should axe this tax. Consumers are paying a hidden luxury tax for non-luxury items. We can hardly describe a $3 item of costume jewellery as a luxury item.
Canadian jewellery retailers and manufacturers are discriminated against. Canadian jobs are lost. Canada will soon be the largest producer of diamonds in the world and our diamonds will cost more in Canada than anywhere else.
The finance committee has recommended that the tax be abolished.
First nations want the tax abolished; they are important participants in the diamond industry at the mining level and also increasingly in the value added participation.
A really important aspect is that retaining this tax is driving the jewellery industry in Canada underground. The volume of illegal evasion and legal avoidance of the tax is estimated to be in the range of 50% of recorded sales or larger. In 1990 recorded sales were $2.3 billion, just to give a benchmark of what kind of numbers we are talking about. When we get that kind of avoidance or evasion, the GST is also completely avoided, which means that in all likelihood this tax is actually revenue negative for the government and an incredible burden for the business community.
It is time to axe this tax. I have a letter from the member from Oak Ridges completely agreeing with my statement. That is dated January 30 of this year. I have a letter from the chair of the Manitoba caucus completely agreeing with my position. That is dated February 6 of this year. I have a letter from the minister of resources for the Northwest Territories that says the same thing.
My time is up, Mr. Speaker.
Gerald Keddy: Mr. Speaker, my colleague has done an absolutely stellar job of bringing forth this bill. It has been long waited for and is long overdue.
I wonder if he has any comments on why a government that has been in power for over a decade, nearly a dozen years, has not looked at this. We hear a lot of talk and speculation by the Prime Minister, of course it is when he is abroad, on making Yukon, the NWT and Nunavut into provinces, but no discussion from him on how these territories should fund their provincial governments.
Obviously, with the burgeoning diamond industry in the north, well instituted mining industries throughout the north, this would be one source of revenue for them and we hear about value added every day in this country. We tell all of our producers that we must have value added, yet we have a punishing tax that the government has done absolutely nothing about.
John Duncan: Mr. Speaker, my colleague's comments allow me to say a couple of things I forgot to say. My colleague from Durham, who seconded this motion, talked about a jeweller family, Hooper's Jewellery, which has been operating for 60 years and for the last two generations, the owners have wanted this excise tax removed. This tax has been there for 86 years. I know in the case of my own community, Preston Jewellers has been fighting this tax and I continue to receive letters concerning this issue.
People have made such good cases in the last 10 years on several occasions before the finance committee and with their own independently commissioned reports and submissions to the finance department. They felt the case was so strong and the promises were so strong, that when there was no delivery at budget time, they have actually given up.
This private member's bill has reawakened some real optimism and they are thinking that this time it might really happen. It is rather inconceivable that members from all parties in the House of Commons are going to reject this notion. The tax is an anachronism.
In terms of the north and the provinces, the Premier of the Northwest Territories has stated publicly his real concern on several occasions. There is a burgeoning diamond industry and the Northwest Territories is getting about 4% return on the royalties. It is the same argument for the east coast offshore oil and gas.
During the east coast offshore oil and gas debate I empathized with Premier Handley's position because eventually the provinces, the territories and industry will find other alternatives or these ventures will not proceed simply because they are not the beneficiary. It is too indirect when the moneys go to the federal authority and then the federal authority transfers them back on a different basis and reduces or increases them on a one to one basis based on the royalties.
It is not a happy situation and needs to change. My bill does not address the bigger question. It only addresses abolishing this tax.
[Intervention]
An hon. member: One step at a time.
John Duncan: Yes, one step at a time.
Eleni Bakopanos: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-259 proposes the repeal of the excise tax on jewellery. I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to this proposal having worked with my colleague, the former parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, as well as my colleagues on the finance committee and the Liberal caucus on this very important issue.
Jewellery and watch products are the only products that are subject to a hidden luxury tax. I agree with the Canadian Jewellers' Association, with which I have worked with for the last five years, including its former president, Mr. Pierre Akkelian, that the federal government is discriminating against this industry.
Some people believe that we are attempting to remove a luxury tax, yet this tax applies to inexpensive jewellery. Jewellery is not luxury. One in three households buy jewellery and the average household in Canada spends less than $130 annually, the hon. member said $170, on jewellery and watches. The average expenditure in fact for a female is actually $98 and for a male it is $36, according to statistics that were furnished by Ernst and Young.
Four million to five million households bought jewellery in 2001 and most of them are low and middle income households. Low and middle income households account for 50% of the sales of jewellery.
In my culture, being of Greek descent, we always buy jewellery for every newborn child. The grandmother tends to buy jewellery, under $100 normally, and gives this as a gift to the child. Looking at the statistics, it is very strange that we would in fact tax a wedding band that costs sometimes around $100 or $200, perhaps more, and we do not impose an excise tax on the wedding gown that costs maybe $1,000 or $2,000. So there is some incongruity in terms of our tax system.
A single mother, for instance, may buy a pearl necklace. It is important to keep in mind that it is not a luxury tax. It is in fact something that would help low and middle income families. As I said, in my culture, it is an automatic thing to do. We normally buy some jewellery for our children. The average receipt, even from a chain like Birks Canada, is under $400.
On the other hand, other true luxury items, and I have always pointed this out to both the present Minister of Finance and the former ministers of finance, such as yachts, expensive cars, designer clothing are all exempt from this tax. In my opinion this tax should be abolished.
As a starting point, I would note that this private member's bill is one of 15 such bills that have been tabled in the current session, each of which requests some form of tax relief in specific circumstances. The proposed measures cover a broad range of initiatives, such as the income tax treatment of adoption expenses, herbal remedies, and fees paid for participation in physical activity or amateur sport. I understand that additional private members' bills proposing tax relief are waiting to be tabled.
There can be little doubt that these proposals reflect genuine concerns about how Canadians interact with and are affected by the taxation system. At the same time, it must be recognized that each and every one of these proposals carries a cost to the fiscal framework. In fact, the 15 private members' bills amount to $2.5 billion per year.
In addition to the fiscal cost that is associated with these private members' bills, one must also consider the difficulties that they may pose for the integrity and robustness of the taxation system and fiscal framework that the government works under.
Taken in isolation, any one of the private members' bills may raise important issues and express intentions that deserve attention and investigation. I am already on the record that I agree with the removal of this tax.
What we should not lose sight of, however, is the cumulative effect that a series of such bills could have on the taxation system. Individual proposals, even those with a relatively modest fiscal cost, could result in an inequity vis-à-vis other taxpayers who would then need to have their circumstances reviewed. Proposals that are evaluated on a stand-alone basis may have unintended consequences or create difficult precedents. A series of such measures may well increase the complexity also of the taxation system or even create opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion, as the hon. member has stated.
On the basis of these considerations, I would suggest that a certain degree of caution is appropriate on the part of the government in terms of studying this bill lest the government lose sight of its longstanding commitment to fiscal responsibility. If there is something that we have come into government to do, it is fiscal responsibility.
One of the hallmarks of the annual budget process is the consultation that takes place with the government asking Canadians for their input to help determine the difficult choices that must be made among competing priorities. Every year, as the hon. member pointed out, the Canadian Jewellers' Association has come before the finance committee with at least two reports, if I am not mistaken because I am not a member, that have suggested that the government do remove this tax. Both the Liberal members and the chairs, who were Liberal, agreed and there was, I believe, all party agreement.
In its May 5, 2004 appearance before the finance committee, the Canadian Jewellers' Association reiterated its request for a repeal of this tax and raised several concerns about this tax. As the hon. member said, the act's $3 tax threshold suggests that the federal excise tax on jewellery is a remnant from a bygone era, something that was once considered a luxury but is no longer considered a luxury. It is the only remaining luxury tax still levied by the federal government
While taxes on alcohol and tobacco can be justified, rightly or wrongly, for health promotion reasons, there seems to be little justification for the excise tax on jewellery as a luxury tax, since other luxuries, as I mentioned earlier, do not face a similar tax. Furthermore, according to the association, because Canada's tax system largely moved away from excise taxes with the replacement of the complex manufacturers' sales tax with the more transparent GST, the CRA no longer has the ability to administer a tax as complex as the federal excise tax on jewellery.
In its presentation to the committee, the Department of Finance disagreed with the characterization of the federal excise tax on jewellery as a luxury tax, noting that “most jewellery sold in Canada is relatively inexpensive and purchased by average consumers”. The department agreed, however, with the Canadian Jewellers' Association that the tax favours imported jewellery over domestically manufactured jewellery and that deficiencies in the tax “make it prone to tax avoidance and evasion”. The department has agreed with everything that we have said so far. According to the department, if “the jewellery excise tax were not already in place, it is less than certain that Parliament would want to legislate one today”.
I would like to add a point that perhaps was not raised by the hon. member. The president of the World Jewellery Confederation, CIBJO, wrote to the Prime Minister and stated that Canada was the last remaining country to have a jewellery tax. Australia and Russia have removed it because of the diamond industry and we are the last remaining country with this tax. Canada cannot be competitive internationally because of this excise tax. As a member of Parliament, I have had the opportunity to make recommendations to the finance committee. The elimination of the jewellery excise tax is one of the issues that I have raised and supported.
To assist the government in its support for small business, following up on budget 2004, the Minister of Finance wrote to the chair of the finance committee asking that the committee take an active role in assessing the merits of a number of measures proposed to support business. The finance committee has recently delivered its second report dealing with excise duties and taxes as they affect vintners, small brewers and jewellers. The report from the committee recommends some form of tax relief for each of these three industries, including a recommendation to phase out the excise tax on jewellery over a five year period.
In delivering its report, the finance committee is mindful of the need to assess competing priorities and the fact that limited fiscal resources are available, but the committee is making a recommendation to the minister. The government supports small business and will continue to review measures to improve the environment for small business to succeed.
I note that the private member's bill also proposes to eliminate the excise tax on jewellery and makes particular note of Canada's role as a diamond producing nation. I want to put on the record that I agree with the hon. member's statement that Canada is a diamond producing nation and we must be competitive. We are known worldwide as having an exceptionally good diamond industry. I agree with his comments that we will continue to help, especially in aboriginal communities.
Mining exploration in Canada, including diamonds, should be supported by targeted income tax provisions designed to recognize the special operating environment of this capital intensive and high risk industry. Provisions include the write-off for capital costs and the carry forward of resource deductions. Exploration companies also derive considerable benefit from the ability to flow expenses that would not otherwise be claimable within the company to investors in flow through shares.
The government has taken several recent actions to improve the taxation of the resource sector. I will end by saying that I agree with the hon. member. Liberal members and other members of the finance committee have been supportive of the removal of this measure.
Mr. Guy Côté (Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, BQ): Mr. Speaker, jewellery is a powerful symbol that transcends centuries and cultures. When we think of jewels, we think of James Bond in Diamonds are Forever , or Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds are a girl's best friend . Unfortunately, I do not think today that I would have got far offering Marilyn a $5 diamond.
Canada and Quebec both have their jewellery industries. This is why I will be supporting Bill C-259 of my colleague for Vancouver Island North. In Canada, the jewellery industry has a total worth of $1.2 billion, most of this is concentrated in small and medium businesses. Some 4,500 companies employ a total of 35,000 people. In Quebec there are about 9,000 such workers in 1,200 companies.
As has been pointed out, hon. members need to keep in mind that this excise tax was created in 1918 to help with the war effort. We won that war, but unfortunately that tax, like many others, although meant to be temporary, had a tendency to put down roots and is still with us. I would give just one other example of such a tax: the income tax that was inaugurated during the second world war.
Indeed, at that time, it was a tax on luxury goods, such as jewels and watches. While a $3 item of jewellery was a luxury item in 1918, as was mentioned earlier today, it is no longer the case today.
But what exactly is the excise tax? According to the Excise Tax Act, it is a federal tax collected on goods that are imported, or made or produced in Canada, based on the duty paid value of imports, or the sale price in the case of the item made or produced in Canada.
I will give all three examples, although the bill only applies to jewels. People at that time spoke of 10% of the portion of the selling price or duty paid value over $50 of clocks and watches for household or personal use, except railway men's watches, another example of the anachronism of those regulations, and watches specially designed for the use of the blind.
It is also 10% on all kinds of articles made in whole or in part of ivory, black amber, amber, coral, mother of pearl, natural shells, tortoise shell, jade, onyx, lapis lazuli or other semi-precious stones. Finally, something pertains a little more specifically to us, it is 10% on articles commercially known as jewellery, whether real or imitation, including diamonds and other precious or semi-precious stones for personal use or for adornment of the person, and goldsmiths' and silversmiths' products except gold-plated or silver-plated ware for the preparation or serving of food or drink.
Again, there is no denying that this tax no longer plays a role at all. We are talking about $3. I have three children who regularly ask me for some change on the weekend. They come back, indeed, with trinkets and some jewels from the discount store. I am surprised to think that they paid a 10% tax on the value of a good for which they may have paid $4 in the first place.
Worse yet, the cost of administering this tax is not known with certainty. According to the Canada Revenue Agency, its administration would cost a maximum of $1.5 million a year. However, it has to be mentioned that the Canadian Jewellers Association told the Standing Finance Committee that administering this tax would cost somewhere between $7 million and $14 million. I agree that there is a very wide gap, but given the often erroneous forecasts by the finance department, I would be inclined to grant more credibility on this issue to the Canadian Jewellers Association.
It would appear increasingly unjustified to collect such a tax on jewels as luxury items. In the current context, in other words in 2004 and no longer in 1918, other luxury items are not treated this way. One could mention, only as an example, yachts, estates, mink coats, caviar and champagne. Nowadays, they are considered luxury items, but they do not come under the scope of this tax.
Our Liberal colleague took great pleasure in mentioning the whole gamut of measures proposed in various private members' bills which increased the costs for the government. I can understand why the government is concerned to some extent, as this excise tax generates roughly $55 million in its coffers.
If the government is really concerned about how to make up for this loss of income, allow me to remind it that the Minister of Finance is planning to put $31.5 billion in the contingency reserve over the next five years. So, I do not think that a little $55 million will jeopardize the government's balanced budgets.
As part of its representations to the Standing Committee on Finance, the Canadian Jewellers Association pointed out, among other things, that while the jewellery excise tax applies only to imported and national items, Canadian jewellers are facing a relatively higher tax bite for three reasons. First, the duty paid value is generally lower for importers than the sales price of Canadian items of jewellery. Second, the popularity of Internet sales makes it easier to order from abroad jewellery that is then imported into Canada, while avoiding—bearing in mind that this is legal—duty and taxes. Third, the excise tax is in fact a tax on stocks in the sense that it limits the quantity of jewellery that a dealer may stock, display and sell.
I want to reiterate something the Liberal member opposite said in her speech because I thought it was important. She said that in her presentation to the Standing Committee on Finance, the Department of Finance and the Canadian Jewellers Association agreed that the tax favours imported jewellery over domestically manufactured jewellery and that deficiencies in the tax make it prone to tax avoidance and evasion. According to the department, if the jewellery excise tax were not already in place, it is less than certain that Parliament would want to legislate one today. I doubt it as well.
That is why we feel that the federal jewellery excise tax is outdated: it no longer meets any social policy objective nor it have the characteristics a tax should have. What are those characteristics? They are: fairness, effectiveness, ease of administration and transparency.
We believe that this tax has a negative impact on employment and the viability of the jewellery sector. Even the provincial, Quebec, and territorial ministers of mining agree that this tax should be eliminated in order to encourage the retail sale of diamonds.
Representations have been made over the last few years by various stakeholders. In committee, the Bloc Québécois, among others, expressed its position a number of times on this issue. Also, back in 1996, the Standing Committee on Finance proposed various recommendations to eliminate this excise tax, and these recommendations were adopted. I sincerely hope that Bill C-259 will be passed by the House. We will support this legislation.
Hon. Ed Broadbent (Ottawa Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, all the arguments in favour of the bill, notably by the mover himself, have already been made and I will be brief in reasserting a number of those to explain why my party gives its support, as it did at the committee stage, for the bill.
As has been pointed out, this tax was first introduced in 1918 and, as my colleague from the Bloc has just said, it remains an anomaly. With the tax system now it is the only luxury tax left in the country. As a result of this tax, diamonds mined in Canada cost more here in our country than anywhere else in the world, which is ridiculous. We have become recently the world's third largest supplier in value of rough gem quality diamonds.
In the Northwest Territories a boom is going on. Currently some 47 different mining exploration projects are going on in that part of the country alone. It is an important basic industry for us.
Our jewellery industry employs some 40,000 people in over 5,000 businesses, many of which are small businesses and a number of which are cottage industries in small communities that are disadvantaged by this tax.
In short, we support the bill because removing the tax simply makes sense for Canadians, Canadians who mine diamonds, small businesses that sell jewellery and Canadian consumers wherever they may live.
Lloyd St. Amand: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to deliver comments to private member's Bill C-259, which asks hon. members to repeal the excise tax on jewellery.
The first point I would like to make concerns the importance of private members' bills. The proposals that are put forward by individual members represent an important link between Canadians, their elected representatives and our parliamentary process.
Where private members' bills affect the taxation system, as is the case with Bill C-259, it is especially important that the government take careful note of the intentions that are being expressed.
In the present case, the idea is to repeal the excise tax on jewellery, a long standing federal tax that raises in the order of $85 million per year. Repeal of this tax is being put forward as a means of providing relief for the jewellery industry. Private member's Bill C-259 also makes special note of Canada's status as a diamond producing nation.
I would like to address each of these points in turn, starting with the excise tax on jewellery as a tax that affects small business in Canada.
The government supports small business in Canada and continues to review measures to improve the environment for small businesses to succeed. Indeed, the suggestions from entrepreneurs and small businesses have formed an important part of the budget consultation process over the past recent years.
In order to assist the government in identifying the best options for future consideration from among the many competing priorities, the government requested in budget 2004 that the Standing Committee on Finance undertake the important role of assessing the merits of a number of measures proposed to support small business.
Recently, in October 2004, the finance committee delivered its second report highlighting the role of excise duties and taxes as they affect Canadian winemakers, small brewers and jewellers. The committee recommended that tax relief should be provided to each of these industries including a recommendation that the 10% excise tax on jewellery be phased out over a five year period.
At the same time, the finance committee noted that there are many other instances where small businesses would benefit from appropriate tax changes and that the number of worthy proposals far exceeds the capacity of the government to fund these changes in a fiscally responsible manner.
In this context, it is interesting to note that there are currently 15 private members' bills affecting the taxation system that have been tabled in the current session. The estimated fiscal cost of these proposals is as much as $2.5 billion per year. I understand that additional bills are in line to be tabled.
Clearly, with such a great range and breadth of requests for relief, it is incumbent on the government that these proposals be managed in the context of a comprehensive approach to tax policy and fiscal planning. Individual proposals must be evaluated through a process that carefully assesses competing priorities with a view to preserving the fundamental principle of fiscal responsibility.
Against this backdrop, the report from the finance committee will receive very careful consideration, as will other proposals for tax relief that are received during the budget consultation cycle.
I would like to now address Canada's role as a diamond producing nation. The emergence of this industry in Canada has been nothing short of remarkable. With exploration expenditures of more than $1.5 billion over the last 10 years and the establishment of two worldclass mines in the Northwest Territories, Canada now accounts for about 15% of world diamond production and is the third largest producer by value after Russia and Botswana.
Canada has a long tradition of mining and exploration, along with a number of important tax provisions that are designed to recognize the unique operating characteristics of the industry.
These provisions include writeoff for capital costs and the carry forward of resource deductions. Another important feature of the mining taxation regime is the ability of exploration companies to flow expenses that would not otherwise be claimable through to investors in flow-through shares.
The government has recently taken action to improve the taxation of the resource sector, including a number of measures that were announced in budget 2003: reducing the corporate tax rate on resource income; phasing in a new 10% tax credit for exploration and pre-production expenses relating to diamonds and other qualifying minerals; and phasing out the federal capital tax, an important measure for capital intensive industries such as mining.
For its part, the excise tax on jewellery poses no competitive disadvantage to the Canadian mining industry as exports are not subject to the tax. In sum, the mining taxation regime including the excise tax on jewellery, provides a strong base for mining and exploration in Canada, including diamonds.
It is worth noting that the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines are the largest private employers in the Northwest Territories with a total of 1,300 direct employees. This is clearly a great boost for the north, an area where the government continues to make strategic investments to facilitate economic and social growth.
In addition to the provision of roughly $2 billion per year in transfer payments, the federal government also provides funding initiatives that are tailored to meet specific needs in the north. Budget 2004 for instance announced the following measures: $90 million over five years to support a northern economic development strategy; $3.5 billion over 10 years to clean up contaminated sites, over 60% of which is expected to occur in the north; and $51 million over 10 years to conduct seabed mapping of the Arctic continental shelf.
As well, in the fall of 2003 the Government of Canada announced $190 million for northern infrastructure investments and $155 million for a national satellite initiative to provide high speed broadband Internet access services to improve access to telehealth, e-business and distance learning services.
Budget 2003 included other measures which will benefit the north, including $25 million over two years for the aboriginal skills and employment partnership, $20 million for aboriginal business Canada and $16 million for northern science.
All of these measures will greatly facilitate economic and social progress in the north, including the development of skills and infrastructure that will support the mining industry and diamond industry.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not return briefly to expand on the fundamental issue of fiscal responsibility. I have already commented that private member's Bill C-259 is but one of many bills seeking relief from taxation in specific circumstances. No matter how well intentioned these bills are, the government must nevertheless be mindful of the cumulative fiscal impact, as much as $2.5 billion, and also the inherent difficulties of considering these proposals on an ad hoc or piecemeal basis that does not provide an effective mechanism for assessing and evaluating competing fiscal priorities.
Over the last 10 years the government has pursued an unwavering commitment to budget balance and fiscal prudence within the context of an integrated policy and fiscal framework. The net result has been an impressive record of economic and social progress.
The government has put forward seven consecutive surplus budgets, achieved a $61 billion reduction in the federal debt and an annual saving of $3 billion on debt servicing costs. Cumulative tax reductions of more than $100 billion have been delivered since 1996, with a primary focus on middle and low income families.
The government is not convinced that the repeal of the excise tax on jewellery should be undertaken, at least not on the basis of private member's Bill C-259. Repeal of the tax is one of many competing priorities, particularly as among measures to support small business.
Gerald Keddy: Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a pleasure for me to speak to private member's Bill C-259 put forward by the member for Vancouver Island North. When he spoke earlier, I had the opportunity to ask a couple of quick questions. I said that he had done an absolutely stellar job in presenting this bill. I wanted to put that on the record one more time.
This is an important bill. It is important not just to a burgeoning diamond industry in Canada's north, but it is important to our resource sector. It is important to the gold mining industry, the silver mining industry, the gemstone industry across this country, and specifically and probably most important right now, to the diamond industry.
In 1918 a tax was brought in, which obviously was to pay for some of the reparations of World War I and the cost of sending Canadian troops abroad. At that time, just as the Income Tax Act which was brought in after World War II, it seemed to be a good and important idea, but today, times have changed.
I am a bit apprehensive and concerned. In his speech the government member who just spoke used all kinds of flowery words about fiscal responsibility and whether the government must look at this in a piecemeal fashion or use a bigger umbrella. I have some real concerns that the government will try to find a way not to support this piece of legislation.
It is one thing to talk about the importance of private members' bills and it is another thing to support them. This is a good bill. The industry has been requesting it for years. It is important and the government needs to support it without any ifs, ands or buts.
I want to speak about the Department of Finance for a minute. There was a study done by the Department of Finance about removing the excise tax. Remember that jewellery is the only luxury item that still has excise tax on it. People can buy a $50 million yacht in this country and not pay excise tax because it is not a luxury item. People can buy caviar, champagne or a mink coat and none of those are luxury items. Those are necessities of life. Yet a person cannot buy a piece of jewellery worth over $3 because that is a luxury. It is just wrong-headed.
The study done by the department concluded that removing the tax would not have a significant impact on contraband activity and therefore, would not offset lost revenue. I would like to speak to that for a second. How did it come up with the conclusion that it would not have a significant impact on contraband activity?
Even though the Canadian dollar has increased in value, it is still worth less than the American dollar. However, our jewellery costs more because there is a 10% tax on it. We are going to pay 17¢ on the American dollar to go to the United States to save 10% on a piece of jewellery, which we are going to smuggle back into the country. And this would not stop that? It would absolutely stop it in a heartbeat. People would not even consider it.
Why would a person buy a $5,000 diamond ring in Canada and pay $500 more than he or she would have to pay south of the border? The person could put it on his or her finger and wear it home. Everybody would do that. Everybody is doing that. This bill is only common sense.
Any money lost, or any thought of losing money, would be more than compensated by the increase in jewellery sales and the collection of the GST, which is 7%, on those sales. This is not rocket science. Even Liberals should be able to figure this out. This is common sense, straightforward, financially sound legislation and it is long overdue.
Let us look at a couple of numbers. In 2003 11.2 million carats of diamonds were mined in Canada for a total of $1.7 billion. That is out of two mines, the Ekati and Diavik mines. There are another three or four mines ready to come on stream. There is another diamond mine in Nunavut ready to come on stream. A half carat diamond has been found in northern Alberta. Diamonds have been found in northern Saskatchewan.
We have finally signed, through the United Nations, an accord to reduce the blood diamond industry of the world. We have the best source of quality gemstones in the world. We are continuing to punish the industry by saying it has to pay 10% more, ship them abroad. If people want nice diamonds, they can go to Antwerp or Boston. Perhaps there is a secret message, and the Liberals want us all to go somewhere else. I am not sure. We really have to deal with this. Tongue in cheek aside, it is an extremely important industry.
Along with that $1.7 billion diamond industry, Canada is the seventh largest gold producing nation in the world. Canada mined 152 tonnes or $2.7 billion worth of gold, with no value added. Keep Canadians, and northerners in particular, as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The government does not want them to think for themselves or to set up an industry that would allow them to become financially secure, independent and produce for themselves. Even the rest of Canada cannot not take advantage of that. It exports it and then considers giving it back.
Silver would be another idea. Canada produced 1,254,712 kilos or 1,229 tonnes of silver last year.
We have a golden opportunity here. All we have to do is get rid of this punishing excise tax.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx): The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the order paper.
It being 2:30 p.m., this House stands adjourned until Monday, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).
(The House adjourned at 2:30 p.m.)